Survival Of The Fittest

The Human Body, by the numbers:

100 trillion neural connections.
5000 milliliters of blood.
650 muscles.
206 bones.
Two kidneys.
Two lungs.
One brain.
One stomach.
One heart.
One intestine; large.
One intestine; small.
One bladder.
One gallbladder.
One pancreas.
One...

____ couldn't remember the other organs. The blood was already enough to throw ___ into disbelief. There was so much gushing out of the slashes in her neck than __ ever would have expected, when Ms. Garcia died there was-no, no, Ms. Garcia didn't die, that wasn't real just like this wasn't real so they couldn't be compared, the spray of her not-blood was just as manipulative as the flood of Kayla's not-blood. It wasn't real. That's what __ told ___self when the knives dug back into to her neck and tore the holes wider. More and more blood gushed onto the beach with her neck torn open. The mess _____ made of Kayla's throat looked nothing like the diagrams in textbooks they'd shared just weeks ago, there was nothing identifiable after ___ claws splayed skin and flesh open for inspection. So it couldn't be real. The thing below ___ wasn't Kayla, it wasn't human, it wasn't real. Right? There was only one way to be sure.

Red stained the blue and white of her hoodie when it tore to reveal gray, then skin, then more bubbling fonts of read. __ was shaking with every movement. Copper clung to ___ throat but __ couldn't stop, had to know, had to be certain that there was something __ could still cling to as deception. There was no denying that __ was sloppy, not a surgeon but a butcher tearing through a carcass that would never look human with the way __ slashed at her. Proof didn't matter anymore, __'d gone too far. Disfiguration cemented that this wasn't a thing that could be hurt, not a person but some very close approximation meant to sell their lies. Yes, that happened all the time didn't it? The protagonist realizes in a moment a horror that people around them have been replaced? Their world upended, an invasion only they can truly see occurring by inches and only their cunning to try and stop it? That's what this was, right?

It wasn't.

__ rose trembling. ___ chest rose and fell in desperate heaves. The glove, ___ sweatshirt, ___ skirt, all were stained deeper than lake that stretched before ___ could wash away. It was true that from a certain perspective Kayla looked nothing like a human being anymore. Arms and legs framing clothes torn to rags wrapped around meat gouged every angle __ could reach. Exposed bone that stopped ___ from digging any deeper. Stomach turned to a pit of lacerated skin and blood. It still didn't feel real, not even when __ looked to her face and saw her eyes frozen open wide staring up at ___. Glassy, cinematic in their unspoken accusation.That's where they had gone too far, yes, that was the proof __'d needed. The glove had hung on bone enough times for ___ to understand resistance. Eyes shouldn't do that. Eyes also shouldn't shine like hers. When the knives clinked off of them __'d be certain, absolutely certain, that this was the one detail they couldn't fake. Blood dripped from ___ claws to her face as __ hovered over it. Held ___ breath. Extended two fingers slowly, and pushed.

They tried to roll away. __ could feel them shift further back under the pressure, and slide around underneath the point of the blade. Was that enough? Eyes shouldn't move like that, right? They weren't rubbery. So they shouldn't look like that on the inside, shouldn't bleed, shouldn't matter if __ pierced them. The fingers rose again. __ held ___ breath, bit ___ lip to steady ___self. They plunged straight down this time with as much force as __ could manage.

Squish.

_____ felt the world spin. __ was on top of her again, arms barely holding ___ up as __ vomited just behind her head. They were still in and sinking deeper, __ couldn't pull them free, kept retching, kept pulling, kept falling until ___ arms gave out into a pool of ___ own sick.

---

So much of what __'d thought since waking up looked desperate. No, stupid. Erratic. __ knew that. Anyone who knew ___ well would understand why, but no one knew _____. Not even _____. The person __ was, really truly was, had been transformed into a fantasy that __ had no hope of ever living up to, and for years that had been okay. _____ didn't like the real world much. It was terrifying, full of people and expectations and challenges __ had no idea how to navigate. There had been an error in ___ production, some fundamental misapplication that made ___ response to all pressure shutting down. When viewed without the lens of clear expectations the world felt so far away, __'d never known what to do with ___self here unless someone else told ___. It made other worlds so tantalizing. Stories let ___ be other people, borrow their admirable qualities as ___ own and imagine what it was like to be strong. Not just strength in the heroic, aggressive sense but strength of identity. It was a natural fit once the internet came into ___ life to start to tell stories about ___self, creating an image that no one could judge by anything but what __ told them. It demanded nothing of ___. __ never had to face ___ inadequacies, there was no need to improve or do anything in the real world that didn't lead back here. Unhealthy. You didn't have to tell ___, __ already knew it what a mess it made of ___ to live like that. It felt good though. It didn't hurt anyone. Wasn't that enough?

It wasn't.

_____ had told ___self so many lies over the years, and that hadn't changed much in the last 24 hours. __ knew __ was lying every time, but it felt better than the alternative. It was easy until it went too far. __ could even lie about where that happened, that it was never supposed to go like this, that __ never really wanted to hurt anyone.

__ wanted to be helpless. Being helpless meant there was nothing __ could do to change. Everything was already decided and __ didn't have to take any risks, expend any effort, bear any pain. __ could call Kayla's death an accident and that would absolve the murder if not everything that came after, but even that was a lie.

__ sharpened the knives, though.

__ swung on someone who wasn't fighting back.

___ mutilated her body.

__ didn't want to die. Deep down somewhere __ must have known that meant Kayla had to, and when __ ripped her body apart __ did it to reset on some new chain of lies that would leave ___ trembling with tears in ___ eyes hours later, safe in the knowledge that __ was the victim.

_____ was tired of being the victim.

((____ Hart Concluded.)

He was tired of lying.

---

((G066: Marco Hart, Game Start))


It felt like hours later when he pulled himself up from the beach, but it couldn't have been more than a couple minutes. Kayla's blood was still pooling around her body. He made himself look at everything he'd done to her and swallowed, the taste of bile still coating his mouth. He didn't deserve to wash it away. Kayla's chair was left toppled over by her body, it wasn't his to take. He started to leave the shore with nothing but what he came with, then paused to look around. When he spoke, his voice came out as a croak, but he didn't know how far the cameras would be so he had to force it out. "You're going to tell them tomorrow and I, I can't tell you not to, you wouldn't listen anyway so that'd be stupid. I want to go home though, so it might, I don't think it's the last time you'll tell them so can I...I just want to ask...there was a mistake, my name..."

Swallow. Deep breathe. Head up.

"My name is Marco. Marco Hart. Please tell them."

Whatever happened to him, whatever he did next, whatever people thought of him here or at home, he was dying as himself. No more lies.

((Marco Hart Continued In i))

"Well," Richard began, "I'm on murder island, so that sucks, but all things considered, actually doing pretty okay in the present moment. And you know-"

Before Richard could finish, Kayla interrupted him, standing up and making her way out the door, not really addressing him in the process. He watched as she left, unsure if he wanted to make some kind of snide comment to her on the way out, but elected against it, for once.

He was going to say a snide comment to Roxie, however. "So," he said, his voice taking on a somewhat sarcastic tone, "how much do you want to bet that she bites it and doesn't come back?"

Almost as soon as the words left his lips, he realized how horrible that joke was given the situation they were in, and more importantly that the person he was making the joke to was a cute girl, so he immediately started to backtrack. "I-uh, I mean, uh..."

He put his hands up, as if to say "hold up" without actually saying it out loud. "Okay that was... in bad taste," he began, "I used to make jokes like that all the time, wasn't really thinking about how context would change it. My bad. Let's just uh... take a second to be quiet for a bit."

Then, an awkward silence ensued. He wasn't sure how much time passed during it, but every second that passed made him feel like more and more of an idiot. Stuck in his own head, thinking about how he had screwed up any chance at flirting that he had, it only occurred to him that Kayla had been gone for a while when he absentmindedly started flicking the safety on his gun on and off.

"Wait... how long has she been out there?"

Did she actually get in trouble? She was just outside, right? It was probably nothing, and she was fine, but it would be awful if his terrible joke turned out to not actually be a joke. Anxiety at the idea started to take over his thoughts, however, and he suddenly began to stand up, looking towards the door, his grip around his gun tightening.

"Uh... do you think we should uh... check on her?"

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

If it was awkward the way Richard… popped in, it was definitely awkward when Kayla decided to step out. That feeling just… hovered in the air. It didn’t help that Richard had made… a joke. Okay, she was one for making jokes about dark things, but even she was like… yeah. Nor did it didn’t help that it’d been… well, a while, and Roxie couldn’t help but wonder.

The stables had been chaotic, sure. But not knowing what’s out there? It was a lot. Letting people separate was a horror cliche, sure, but there was a reason why that cliche existed. If you wander off alone…

Roxie, calm.

Just check up on her, and see. She’s probably fine. Just needs a moment.

Roxie pulled herself up, took a moment to check her leg, and straightened herself out.

“Right. It’s time to check on her.”

She wasn’t one to sit around awkwardly, anyways.

She went to the door. She slid it open.

“Kayla? Are you there?” she called out.

A moment passed.

“Kayla?”

Her eyes darted for a sign of her. Across the lake, then towards the shore, then the fallen chair, then--

Roxie froze. She said nothing.

Her hand remained on the handle, knuckles white and shaking.

((Garnet continued from His Whole Life Packed in Two Bags, Just Two Bags))

She tripped.

She fucking tripped like a fucking dummy and now Nona was probably dead in a ditch somewhere and it was totally all her fault for not keeping a closer eye on her, cause, cause who had time to be upset or actually react like an actual person towards some real, terrible, shitty things happening when you had another person weigh--okay no. No, that was enough, that was enough, GarBar. So you had a clumsy moment, so what? You were running through the woods, slippery slidey woods, whilst trying to find Nona, whilst trying not to cry, and without actually knowing where you were going, it'd be more surprising if you didn't fall foul to random tree root assault.

Her glasses going flying off in the process was, admittedly, both surprising and upsetting and had put the major brakes on her actually making any progress. Urgency asides, Garnet depended enough on her glasses that running off without them was going to cause her what in technical terms one called a real bad time. That had cost her the better part of ten minutes as she scrambled around combing the forest floor, stooped over and clenching her jaw as sobs of frustration wracked her body. She couldn't handle this, not something petty and dumb like this when she needed to get on after Nona before something awful happened to her.

Garnet found them again in a place she could have sworn she'd checked three times already, straightened her hat, and then rushed off again, one hand clutched to her glasses to hold them in place this time. She broke the treeline to a body of water and a boathouse, and through her blurred eyes, spotted that there was a person standing outside of it. A person standing over--over, oh no.

"Nona!" Garnet could only think of getting over there as fast as she could. "What'd you do!? What'd you--" the... thing on the ground was much more slight in build than Nona. "What'd... christ" she slowed, stumbling to a halt. "What..."

Christ. What the fuck.

"Holy shit, she's actually dead?!"

Richard stared in complete disbelief as he leaned to look out the door. Now he actually felt really bad about the joke. Weirdly enough, though, he didn't feel all that bad about the fact that Kayla was dead. If anything, he felt worse about the fact that he didn't feel bad than her actually being dead. Sure, he had been talking to her not that long ago, and now she was just gone, but he didn't really feel it. He always felt that way when it came to death, it never felt real to him. He had gone to the funerals of his grandparents before, but he had never really felt all that much, even though he felt like he should've.

All the blood was pretty messed up, though, even if it was pretty far away. Made it feel a lot more real than the prettied-up corpses he'd seen at funerals, made it feel a lot more visceral. He tried to think of a bright side to the situation, but was drawing a blank. Sure, he might be alone with a cute girl now, but it was pretty unlikely that any flirting would land all that well, given the situation. She'd probably need time to calm down and forget about the bloody corpse of the possibly-friend she was just hanging out with. Then he could get his schmooze on-

Wait. No. There was another person showing up. Garnet or something? He really didn't know. It was another girl, at least. Not really his type, or anything, but another girl was better than another guy. Since, if he was honest, guys (including himself) were dumb as hell. Colin was probably the best example of that he could think of, but Richard himself was easily a close second, given how much he'd been letting his dick rule his thoughts in the last twenty minutes or so.

If he were to do something smart, for once, it'd probably be to interrogate the first person to show up after a murder.

Raising his gun towards Garnet, he called out to her. "Yo! Did you just show up, or are you the person I need to blow away for all this?"

Roxie had seen a lot of messed up things in her life.

She sat through legitimately terrifying movies. She’d seen pictures of real dead bodies. Don’t get the wrong idea, it was, like, declassified images of crime scenes and mummies and embalmings and body farms and stuff. She saw her own leg, twisted and mangled, as a child. She saw Ms. Garcia’s head just… explode.

But it took her a moment, longer than a moment, to realize just what she was looking at.

Part of her screamed to run over, check to see if her vision was failing her. But her hand remained where it was, just shaking and gripping tighter and tighter.

Richard was shouting in her ear the obvious, but Roxie only flinched slightly.

It wasn’t long before they were joined by someone else.

Garnet from the basketball team was running towards… Kayla, and stopped just a few feet away. And, right away, Richard was escalating.

Roxie took in a deep breath. Take a moment to count.

She could smell the blood.

“Right, um… Garnet. Do you… have an idea of what might have happened?”

Good place to start.

It took three solid seconds for Garnet to realise that a gun was being pointed at her. She just, she just couldn't with this. That was a dead, right there. That was a literal dead. Someone had ripped her to actual fucking pieces and Garnet's brain was going all kinds of bad places with that information because she'd been following Nona best she could and Nona wasn't here, and even if logic was like 'yeah but she probably ran off in a different direction or something you fell way behind', logic wasn't easy, looking at something like this.

If it wasn't for the gun grabbing Garnet's focus, she thought she would have puked.

Turned out that having one of those babies pointed right at you was a great way of stablising your stomach. Garnet blinked, then swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. That was Richard, right? She thought that she'd played a pick-up game of D&D with him at school one time? Maybe that was someone else. Her memory was a little bit shaky at this exact moment in time because A) dead body and—well dead body probably occupied the alphabet all the way through to P or something, but Q) he was pointing a gun at her.

Thankfully, there was another person to kind of occupy her attention for a second and peel it away from her current desire to be like 'aaaaah oh god what the actual fuck' some more. Roxie! Garnet knew Roxie. She was chill and fun and they'd brushed past each other in drama a couple times; she did super cool makeup stuff and Garnet had kind of thought about asking her to help her do stuff for cosplaying her barbar before but it'd always sort of fallen by the wayside. Garnet latched onto the even vaguely less freaky part of this situation.

"No, I don't know, it's just—I was following Nona but then I fell, tried to keep going in the same direction and wound up here and then I just saw—" she made vague gestures at ground level, trying not to look down again. "She was...like that already. SeriouslyIjustgotheredon'tshootmemaybethanks."

((Continued from A Nightmare And A Wet Dream))

((Suicide ideation also continued from A Nightmare and a Wet Dream hahahahahahahahahahaha fuck))

Megan was lost. Seriously, how the hell was Megan lost, there was a flipping road--which was probably unsafe to walk on, ha--that went all the way from about where she was back to the cliff. She couldn't even do that right, so that's just. The kind of life she's living, isn't it? There was even a map. She'd even checked the map. Not very closely. It was hard to care. Dumbass.

There were moments every now and then that she had cared, times in her walk when her pace had almost turned into a run. Almost like she'd finally found something worth living for, which was wrong, but not in the way it seemed obviously wrong. She'd heard that people were often giddy right before their suicide attempts, but she wasn't excited about dying, not really. She was excited to be free, probably: no more of this, no more trying to talk yourself down, no more mental gymnastics revolving around telling herself things that she didn't really believe and then lying to herself by telling herself that the reason she didn't believe them was because her brain was lying to her. No more, no more, no more. Yes. If only Megan could kill herself without dying.

And then the moment would pass and the fog would come back as Megan's brain reminded her of why she sorta-not-really-but-actually wanted to kill herself. Just, look at her. Don’t call it a cry for help, but look at her, because if the only way Megan could ever be happy was by dragging down whoever held out a hand for her, she was really going to do it. She’d rather be miserable than make other people miserable, and she’d rather be dead than either.

Which was why she stopped when she saw the scene, even though she almost kept walking. The dead body, the boy with the gun. Give her a sign. Give her a reason to live even if she doesn’t want to--especially if she doesn’t want to--because she knows from her head to her heart to her bones to her soul that’d she fucking--fucking--hate every minute of it. Because the only way it would be okay for her to live was if she never let herself be happy again.

Megan forced a run out of herself to arrive between Garnet and Richard. Faced Richard, eyes averted, hands in the air. Harmless. Megan was harmless, if nothing else.

"Stop," mumbled softly. "No one else has to die today."

If only they knew.

"Holy shit, are you all fucking stupid?"

Richard had picked the wrong person to try to be friendly to and the wrong place to try to be friendly. He couldn't believe just how much of an idiot all of his classmates were. They were plopped down in a death game, and somehow, all three of the girls in his vicinity decided to be giant morons of their own free will, all in completely different ways. Kayla didn't watch her back and just sat out in the open asking to have her throat torn open by the next rabid animal that happened to come by. Roxie decided to try to be friendly to someone standing over the dead body of someone she had been talking to not too long ago, without figuring out if they were a threat or not first. Garnet, according to what she was saying, decided to run up to a dead body without even considering the idea that other people might be nearby and might think she was responsible.

And, for the pièce de résistance, Megan decided to throw herself into the line of fire as if that wouldn't potentially cause the person holding the gun to open fire. He had felt his finger twinge on reflex, had he not held himself back, he would have shot her dead.

He was almost impressed just by how thoroughly idiotic his supposed competition was. If everyone he met was really this stupid—and so far, they all were—he'd probably only have... three, maybe four, other people that would seriously pose a threat to him? As comforted as he was by that fact, he still couldn't avoid the rampant stupidity on display causing his temper to spike.

He sighed, lowering his gun as he took a deep breath. He liked Megan, at least, even if she was the most profoundly moronic of the profound morons in front of him. He could tell just by looking at her face that she went through the same melancholic, hopeless, harmful feelings that permeated his thoughts whenever he was alone and wasn't distracting himself with some kind of video game. Back in GHHS, she was one of the few people he could talk to without trying to constantly tear them or himself down in the process because of that.

Of course, someone he liked being that stupid made him even madder, so he figured that he might as well tell her how to survive just a little longer.

"Look, Megan," he began, again, "I like you, but you really need to rethink your behavior going forward. We're expected to kill each other, and people are going to be constantly on edge even if they don't really want to hurt anyone. I nearly killed you just now on reflex because you startled me."

He looked Megan up and down, cocking his head to one side as his eyes narrowed. "All of you could learn to be more careful, take things slow, and not just assume that you won't get hurt just because you can't imagine your classmates hurting you. Because, if you think like that, you're going to get murdered, just like Kayla."

“I understand. It's just that... this whole thing doesn't need to escalate more than it has, you know?”

Roxie finally let go of the handle. Her arm fell and shook at her side limply. She stepped out a bit more. Breathe in, breathe out.

“Ah, sorry. What I'm saying is, it's good to stop, breathe, and talk it over before we do something.”

It was another cliché, not just in horror, but in fiction in general. Oh, shoot, there's a dead body, and someone standing over it. Clearly that means they are the killer. Nevermind they-- Garnet in this case-- were just as shocked as they were. Again, another cliché applicable to consider in real life. She just wished she'd remembered the “splitting up” thing before Kayla ran off. In any case, being impulsive wasn't going to help much.

Though, it wasn't like she didn't know she was going to die here. Nothing new, really.

Roxie couldn't tell the exact number of injuries from here, but she tried to look Garnet and Megan over for any signs of a weapon they would have used, just in case. She didn't see anything yet. She saw Garnet run up, but Megan had shown up a bit after. Attracted by the noise? She just jumped in between her, Richard, and Garnet.

“Right, uh...”

Roxie thought for a moment. Then, her eyes widened.

“Wait, Garnet, did you say Nona came by here?”

And that was her heart rate going back up.

Okay so first of all fuck you, Richard. Sorry that she wasn't an emotionless gamebot--especially fuck you, Richard for somehow being way too cool over the fact that someone he'd presumably been spending at least some time with was lying dead on the floor cut up to bloody pieces. Like, the fuck!? It kept coming back to that. Kayla was lying there. Dead. She was dead. She was dead, dead, dead. Thought--No.

Garnet didn't mouth off because gun, putting it simply. Gun bad scary and Richard had handily reminded her why she'd never made a point of actually befriending him after that time they played together. And uh, someone suddenly arriving between the two of them, that was surprising and yikes. Garnet really had been fixed on Richard not to notice Megan before she was literally jumping between her and him. That could have easily gone very, very badly.

Thankfully, Roxie was still talking and that was a distraction from Dichard.

"Right. Yes. I was trying to keep up with her. She kind of freaked out and ran off from our group and I feel a bit responsible for making sure she's okay, so..." Garnet trailed off. "I don't know. I fell way too far behind. She could be anywhere by now!"

Or dead.

Megan smiled, or almost smiled. Her lips were cracked. Richard liked her, Richard cared about her, Richard wanted her to live. How cute.

It all tugged at her for a second, before she was reminded of the costs of what she was feeling now. She’d given up on them for a reason. Oh, it would be lovely if Richard wanted to be the one to make her life worth living, but that wasn’t really fair, was it?

“Whoops. That would’ve been really tragic.”

She’d done it again. It’d slipped out again, before she could stop it.

The smile on Megan’s face was light, now, or she hoped it was light. Don’t look at her, don’t help her, don’t listen to her, please, no matter what she says, no matter what her eyes say. She’s trying to tell you not to. Please listen to her. That’s the only reason she’s allowed to stay.

Nona…Nona? What happened here?

Nona? Who the fuck was Nona?

If Richard had known he was going to wind up in a situation ahead of time, he probably would've taken the time to learn the names of his classmates, but unfortunately for him, connecting the names to faces around the halls was difficult. He had been lucky to mostly run into people he at least vaguely recognized up to this point.

Still, it sounded to him like whoever this person happened to be, it was probably whoever killed Kayla.

Richard began to approach Kayla's body in silence, as everyone else spoke. He was starting to think he should probably just go ahead and cut his losses and get out of this place, but he wasn't quite ready yet. While it was starting to get crowded, and sticking with crowds wasn't really his style, he needed to verify who exactly this new threat was before he high-tailed it.

Squatting next to the dead girl, Richard began to crane his head to look her over, trying to assess exactly how she was killed. And in his unprofessional opinion, it looked like she got all the blood in her body slashed out of her. Not a fun way to die, probably went by pretty slowly.

"Hey uh, Garnet?" He began to ask, his voice surprisingly monotonous despite the corpse of someone he had just been talking to sitting right in front of him. "Did this uh, Nona, happen to have any kind of like, blades on her person or some shit? Also, if so, what the hell does she look like?"

He knew what the answer was probably going to be, and he was prepared to pretend to be shocked, despite himself. Turning to look at the rest of them, he brought one hand up and pointed his thumb at himself. "Because, not to brag or anything, but I think Detective Smith here just figured out who the perp was."

The impression Roxie was getting from Richard was that he was a bit of a blunt type? 'Blunt' wasn't necessarily bad, but... well, tact. Then again, he'd said 'hi' to her and Kayla by bursting in like some wannabee action-movie character.

…

Kayla had been alive then. It'd only been a few minutes.

Her hands still shook.

“Ah... I asked because, uh...”

Was Nona the type? Was she giving her the benefit of a doubt? Richard seemed to think so without even knowing of the whole Nona situation or even what she looked like, by the sound of things.

“We ran into her yesterday. Kayla and I, I mean. She, um... she seemed pretty confused and freaked out? Like, she seemed to be in serious denial, and... I guess she thought we were still on the trip or something.”

Roxie had to chew on the idea. Nothing about Nona said 'potential psycho'. That said... either she'd also been attacked, or--

Nona was in worse shape than she realized. Had she panicked? Was she still in denial, or snapped out of it, only to become desperate as the walls caved in?

Roxie clenched a fist.

Why was everyone dicks right now? Sure, let's crack jokes about getting shot, that's funny, right? NO. No it isn't! Fuck, dudes!

Okay, okay, hold it together, GarBar. No need to start mouthing off right as things seemed to be calming down with guns and voices both getting lowered. Time and a place for that kind of thing, and like, well, if Megan was going to be morbid she was going to be morbid and giving her a lecture probably wasn't going to change that.

She was thrown enough that it took her a couple seconds to realise what Richard was saying, and then that took a good bit longer to properly filter through her head. Wait, wait wait wait wait wait. What? He had to be kidding. The last time Garnet saw Nona she was running scared, flipping out, flailing around and swiping that Krueger glove through the airooohhhhh shit.

Nnnnoooo. Shit. No no no. Shit.

Richard was putting some pieces together, but Garnet sure as hell hated the picture he was trying to show her.

"She... had this knifeglove thing. Like, Nightmare on Elm Street if you ever saw that? Like that," Garnet took off her hat, rubbed her forehead a few times. Saying it out loud dropped a leaden weight into the pits of her stomach. Too real. Way too real. She shouldn't be able to imagine Nona doing that. Shouldn't be able to imagine anyone doing that.

Garnet glanced at Roxie. "Yeah. Yeah," she said, a little hoarsely. "That's, uh, that's what I thought I talked her away from."

She swallowed, hard, replaced her hat. "Look. Come too if you want but I'm going after her. Either she's in trouble or she—" 'is the trouble', was what Garnet wanted to say. That was pithy, right? A nice little bit of wordplay. She'd always loved that, nailing the one liners, getting groans or smiles of approval from the rest of the table. It... it didn't feel so good this time around.

"—she needs someone to talk some sense into her."

Or beat. Garnet flinched at the obtrusive thought. Thanks for that one, brain. She nodded to the others in turn, gave a little wave that you could maybe interpret as a beckon if you really wanted, then headed on in the most logical straight line she could think of that was opposite to the direction she entered. She stuck her hand in her pocket, felt the roll of quarters. Yeah.

((Garnet continued in Know Their Names))