Survival Of The Fittest

Oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God.

Shadows of death, scythes raised high into the sky, all ready to swing. He'd heard the names. Now there were more. Blake, Sven, Marco. Would their names be on the Announcements? As victims? As killers?

Would Tom's?

Death's always been inevitable.]

He knew what to fear.

"This one wasn't on the announcements," Sven said, frightfully calm. "They would've mentioned the burning or the fall. We can wait until tomorrow and find out."

That made sense. That made sense. Wait. Just wait. Buy themselves some time. No need to hurt each other. No need for a scythe to fall. Unless...unless one of them was a killer. Unless one of them was just...waiting.

You wanna see my hands?" Marco's voice was rancid with malice: the barrel of his flare gun trained on Blake. "You see my hands now... Now what?"

And Blake, calm as a man with no name, barely looked at him. "So this dumb ess-oh-bee definitely killed that guy, yeah? We're done flappin' gums? What next?" A single, dismissive glance towards Marco. "Oh, sorry, bein' rude. Jellyfish hears ya. Jellyfish don't care. Try not to burn down the buildin' there Cyclops, we'll get back to ya.

Tom's heart pounded. His hand clenched tight at the haft of his kami. He tried to keep his eyes on Marco and Blake. He tried not to look like a panicking animal. He tried not to feel like a panicking animal.

"Blue hair," he mumbled. "Not sure...couple people, right? Blue hair. Gotta have blue hair. Gotta."

He sounded crazy. Stop it Tom. You're a storyteller. No, better: you're a story hearer. Be better. Be better. Be better.

"What happened?" Tom asked, looking between Marco and Blake. "Have you guys...seen something?" It took a lot of effort to keep his voice neutral, interested without being judgmental. "Me, I've just been...walking." He shrugged. "Ran into Rich and...Colin?" He said the last questioningly, uncertain. "Haven't seen anything. Besides this-" he tapped the collar with his free hand. "I don't feel...we're still us, right?" His eyes flickered at Marco. "The four of us, anyways...we're not killers. We didn't do this. We..."

Was he making sense? He didn't think he was making sense. He had to make sense.

"We're just telling stories," he said. "Blue-haired girl-" he nodded at Sven. "-secret killers-" Nodded at Marco. "Wolf in sheep's clothing." He nodded at Blake. "Let's just..." He took a deep breath. "Honestly, I can barely stand looking at that body, and I don't...I don't know if..." There were tears in his voice, as the image of his grandad enshrouded in hospital equipment shone through his mind like a moon in the night. "I don't think I can...handle it. If anyone actually..."

The good thing was, Sven's desire to intercede had diminished drastically when the boy with the bandaged face launched into his whole monologue. It was just... Sven didn't feel as much kinship with him, he supposed, at this precise moment. There were some awful things he had thought of doing in his life, for some awful reasons, but this very specific one was not among them and he struggled to keep up.

He also felt like he was maybe missing the joke. Jellyfish? What did jellyfish have to do with anything? He could probably figure it out if he thought really hard, or maybe asked, but that was altogether too much effort. Everyone was still just talking and talking, and he wasn't sure anyone was really listening to anyone else. People got like this a lot, each one playing out their own personal script, with the speech of others acting more as moments of dramatic pause than as added information or chance for things to change.

Sven was sort of guilty of part of that too, to be fair; he lacked interest in holding center stage, but he also allowed the words of others to become a blur of background sound, rather often at that. He was hanging on now, kind of, but his grip was slipping every time a response landed in an order that struck him as off. He sort of wished they would go outside to hash this out, and then whoever came off better could come back in. He wouldn't suggest that, though. It would be impolite. It was still raining.

There was just one thing that really cut at the heart of the situation, and even it wasn't quite correct. Joe, the other bystander, starting breaking down, claiming that they were all just telling stories. That perked Sven up, and he smiled at Joe, nodded, quickly adjusted his sunglasses.

"Close," he said, quietly, "but we're not telling stories. We're living them."

That might not help Joe handle the situation any better, but then again, maybe it would be useful. Maybe he would understand. Sven considered that an acceptable contribution to the proceedings, and dug into his pocket for a protein bar he'd stashed there earlier. He opened the wrapper and took a bite, though kept his eye on the standoff. He chewed. It was pretty bad, bland, dry and grainy. Sven tried to chew food thoroughly, in normal life, when he remembered, but right now he just wanted this mouthful down, especially since the water he'd need to wash it away was all in his bag, which he still sat upon.

Something was bothering Sven, though, this little itch in his mind, about everything transpiring. His brow wrinkled. A second more and he had it.

"He definitely didn't kill that guy, though," he added, nonchalant, "or he'd know how useless flare guns are for hurting people."

Marco's eye twitched as the Jellyfish had the audacity to speak without permission. He bit his lip as the Jellyfish insulted him, and treated him like a joke. Did this fool not understand what a flare gun could do to someone? Was the Jellyfish this fucking stupid? Did they want to become a human lighthouse? Sven didn't take him seriously either? A flare gun wouldn't do damage? How do you explain the dead man in the room, or other previous flare gun accidents? How do you explain the movie Dredd? Flares were very fucking dangerous and Marcus was dangerous on his own so the combination of the two meant real damage was about to happen.

Well, if the Jellyfish wanted to get shot so bad, Marco would have to oblige him. Except... There's a problem with that.

Marcus Volker was bluffing when he said he had ammo. There was none. Zero, zilch. He couldn't kill Carl even if he wanted too... He stared wordlessly at Carl and Tom, then at the statue Sven was sitting by. Carl and Tom were near the exit. Marco could not stay here, because Carl and Tom had weapons, and Marco had what amounted to a toy at this point. He needed a proper plan now. They were calling his bluff.

Breath in, breath out.

Marco grabbed onto the railing of the stairs, and jumped and vaulted over it. His foot got caught on the railing.





*THUD*





Marco's boots squeaked along the ground as he scrambled to his feet. He began to not only sprint to the exit, but do so in a serpentine manner, so as to become a harder target so Carl could not shoot him. What would have been a five second sprint became a fifteen second one, but it had to be done, because a moving target was a hard to hit target. As he got closer to the two blocking his exit, he slipped and fell on the ground again, just five feet away from them.

To buy himself time as he stood back up, he tossed his flare gun at Carl, bouncing it off of his head. He resumed his serpentine maneuver towards the exit of the building, his boots slipping along the dirt as he smacked into the bars next to the doorway with a loud *PING*. He pulled himself to his feet, and disappeared around the corner.

((Marcus Volker continued in I'll Get Mine. ))

The other two were not following their decisive lead. They saw an unhinged man bragging about how he was going to set every person he met on fire standing by a burnt out corpse holding the murder weapon, and their conclusion was that he was probably innocent. Blaise had little time to marvel at their stupidity before Marco eclipsed it with what the most boring of their Tinder matches would have described as "hardcore parkour." His movements were urgent and sporadic with seemingly no plan behind them; twice he sprawled himself across the floor in perfect position for Blaise to execute him, but what was the point? For someone who seemed so confident in his ability to kill them all mere moments ago, Marco looked like a coward scrambling and ducking his way past them. People revealed their true colors when the chips are down, and Marco had just lost his last ha-

The metaphor ran off track when the gun clocked Blaise in the middle of their forehead. They stumbled backwards with a yelped "Fuck!" swallowed by a gunshot into the floor. Only chance kept their footing under them between the daze and the recoil, and unfortunately it did not hold their composure so tightly. They spun towards the door with their barrel up, but Marco was gone. "Fuck!" There was blood dripping down their forehead. Blaise had not lived so sheltered a life that they had never been hurt before. If you asked the correct questions to the correct people with the correct leverage you might find certain correct circumstances where they even sought it out. This was an inconvenience compared to what they had willingly put themselves through, but it's real damage was not to their face. The gall of someone like Marco to not only harm them, but to do so without consequence stung deep in their sense of control. It was not an injury but an insult, one they had been denied the opportunity to return. There would be consequences. Absolute consequences for Marco next time they saw the worm infested little shit, but anyone who got in their way in the interim would prove convenient enough as well.

Tom was today's first winner. "Why did you not stop him? The man stands over a flame broiled body and threatens to do it again, and you speak of stories? He's a fucking murderer you idiot! You don't stutter through questions when he runs, you cut him down!" Hiding wouldn't save Sven from their ire either. "And you! My condolences your gifts of deduction were left smeared across the highway, but in the future if you have nothing but fantasy to offer then stay silent and listen to your betters, you invalid shit for brains!" Uncalled for and inadvisable. Distasteful even by their standards. Most unfortunately, however, it was decidedly not Carl. The words did not match the character they had crafted, but even if they had their own tense, heavily accented voice had tore the rant out of their throat.

"Fuck." Quieter. Eyes darting from Tom to Sven's hiding place to the door and back. There was space. If Marco had made it in his floundering, they could too.

Blaise twitched the rifle well above Tom's head and fired, stumbling into a sprint. If the pair panicked and did not follow they could retrieve their bag from its hiding place and be on their way, and if they chose to give chase?

Sigh.

Their low profile had been blown either way. No reason to give them a second chance.

((Blaise d'Aramitz Continued In Darkness Beloved))

"We're not telling stories. We're living them."

Tom's head jerked to Sven. His eyes were wide. There was an echo there, and something more. Something like inspiration. He needed more. His mouth was already forming questions.

And then.

A blaze of movement. A twist. Tom screamed--an ungainly, awful sound, febrile with fear. He sprinted forwards, his weapon forgotten, his fear forgotten, skidding to the place where Marco had disappeared. He stared down...

And saw a fleeing shape, like a scared rabbit bounding away.

What...what...

"Why did you not stop him?" Blake's voice was iron fury. "The man stands over a flame broiled body and threatens to do it again, and you speak of stories? He's a fucking murderer you idiot! You don't stutter through questions when he runs, you cut him down!"

Tom stared at Blake, his mouth moving without making sounds. He was trying to explain. He was failing. And then-

The thunder of a gun. Tom shrieked, clutched at his ears and bent low to the ground. The kami dropped from numb fingers, as Blake staggered away. Tom remained where he was, hunched on the ground, his eyes thick with shadows.

Fear the Reaper fear the reaper fear fear fear fear fear

"Fuck," Tom gasped, grabbing for his fallen kami, stumbling away like a drunkard.

(Tom Swift continued in When you hurt me, you hurt yourself)

Sven took another bite of his bar and chewed more fully this time. By the time he swallowed, he was alone again.

A lot had happened, a whirl of color and movement and gunfire. It had scattered the others, inexorably, leaving Sven alone with the charred corpse. Except, now that he looked at it, he wasn't seeing any signs of burning after all. Whatever smell of death there was, and of fire, had become so familiar he could no longer detect it. That was mildly troubling, but he put it from his mind again, quickly and easily. The smaller a thing was, the simpler a time he had locking it away.

Over the next minutes, he slowly finished his bar, then washed it down with a sip of water that turned into half a bottle. All throughout, he listened closely for some evidence of someone else coming to meet him, one of the others returning, but there was nothing except the steady patter of rain on roof and ground outside. And yet, he was haunted by a feeling, stronger and stronger, that there was something very important he'd forgotten to do or say.

It wasn't regret over not helping the one-eyed boy. Sven had considered it, probably too seriously. It would have been a very bad idea, would have probably gotten him into quite a lot of trouble, and that was setting aside the way the encounter had turned out entirely. Different people followed different rules, and crossing those could have unpredictable and unfortunate results. The sounds that had accompanied the boy's departure, non-diagetic thought they might have seemed to all others present, was evidence enough of that. Sven had let himself fantasize, and that was unwise.

No, it was something he should've told them, he decided. The spirit of the staircase—something in French he couldn't remember. It would come to him, surely, too late for it to do any good.

He meant to pass the night here, and maybe he would, but as he looked at his hands and legs and the bag he sat on, he saw that he and his belongings were slowly turning more and more insubstantial. He could see the floor through his legs now, could hold his hand over his left eye and see straight through it to perceive the statues beyond. He was feeling lighter as well. Someone had told him, sophomore year, that the vast majority of each person was made up not of matter but of the space between atoms. That long-ago classmate had been trying very hard to sound profound, and Sven had paid the observation little mind, but he was starting to get it now.

He was more not than he was here, when it came to him with a click. The thing he'd wanted to say, the warning he'd meant to offer.

"I'm not afraid," Sven said quietly, to the now-deserted building. "Only real people can hurt me."

He faded fully, and when the announcements played in the morning he was long gone.

((Sven Vee continued in The Erika Vendetta))