7 Rings

[Melusine]

"Yeah just... press the trigger and it goes pow."

Willow shrugged.

"That's the easy part," she smiled, grabbing the hatchet. It felt really good in her hands. "Reloading it, that's the thing that's really hard to plus it takes a while so you can't just like, you know, reload it quickly between two shots."

Her fingers drummed against the handle of her new weapon. She wasn't sure if it was a nervous habit or not. She never quite put her finger on it.

"I didn't really understand it's super convoluted and annoying, but there's a manual and some bullets in my bag, let me get them for you."

She bent down, putting the hatchet against her legs as she dug through her holdings. There were some clothes that were obviously not her, an opaque bag of blood and other things, and then, right there: the manual and the bullets.

"I'm just really not good with guns, you'll probably be better than me."

[Ryuki]

“Wow. Thanks,” Zach said, astonished. He never would have thought someone would just trade him a weapon like this. Out of all the things that have happened on this island, this surprised him the most.

He took the bullets and the manual from Willow and put them in his bag. He bit into the protein bar he tried to offer her before this exchange.

“You know,” Zach said in between bites, “I won’t forget this. Even if we’re forced to kill each other, I won’t forget your generousity.”

[Melusine]

"Awww," she said, "you're so sweet."

Willow turned her head toward Katrina's vague direction. She was so near yet so far. Willow could just leave and... she'd be okay. Katrina would be okay. Willow would be okay. Everyone would be fine.

Well, as fine as being stuck in a murder game could be. But Willow was fine, she was happy, she was doing better than she had ever done. Katrina... not so much. She needed Willow as her moral support, she figured. It wasn't hard to see it. The girl was a mess, stitched together by strings that Willow had weaved between her injuries and her wounds. With just a little click of a scissor, Katrina would fall down like a puppet cut from her string, bound to the ground, incapable of moving.

And so, Willow decided not to leave Katrina. She turned her head back toward Zach, smiling.

"You should leave though," she said softly, "Kat wanted to kill you during your sleep but I kinda stopped her because I wanted to get on with you."

She shrugged, feeling the handle of her weapon.

"I think that's why she left," she giggled, "so she would give us free time before she'd come back and kill you."

[Ryuki]

“Really now?,” Zach said, “Well, thanks for telling me.”

In truth, Zach had planned to leave after attaining a new weapon. But, fortune must truly be on his side to let him get away with no problems. He may have only one weapon still, but this new weapon will benefit him greatly.

Zach rose to his feet, grabbing his bag, his new gun in hand. The weight was enough for him to use both hands. The machine gun he had early on was weighty, but this new gun felt heavy in more ways than one.

“Welp, guess I’m off,” he said as he turned his back to Willow, “Good luck to you, cuz who knows if and when we’ll meet again.”

Zach walked onward into the wilderness, his new gun in tow.

I can’t fucking believe this. Mission fucking accomplished!

(Zachary Beck, continued elsewhere...)

[Melusine]

Willow put her hand over her mouth, laughing. He was so stupid. How did everyone gobble any shit that was thrown at them as if it was a fancy treat? She didn't get that. Her classmates were fascinating, but not enough for her to bring herself to care about them in any sort of way other than logical.

She turned around, dropping the hatchet slash cleaver to the ground. It was so easy. Now, she didn't even need to bother with carrying the gun around.

Willow cupped her mouth with her hands, ready to project her voice to Katrina. She couldn't help but smirk, just like a child who had dodged a bullet or three. It was so easy. She couldn't believe that it worked.

She stopped herself from screaming. Willow wanted to do the action, the walking, the movement. Katrina had done enough to prep their water, Willow had that to give to her. Instead, she picked up her gear and walked toward the location of Katrina. She felt good with her new weapon.

"Hey Kat," she said with a smile, "hum, I-"

She was in control of the action, of the narrative. She knew was she was doing. This was coordinated.

"Something happened with Zach," she said softly, knowing that the pause could imply anything and everything between murder and kissing, "he left."

[Laurels]

Katrina spent a few minutes waiting for the purification process to occur. It was an easy process, according to the bottle. Just fill the plastic bottle with water, dump a tablet in, then wait a half hour. It would be silly to stare at the bottles and wait for it to finish, but it was nice to be at the water's edge. It was cooler, the water felt nice on her, and the sounds around it were nice. Katrina started to wonder if she could have a moment to scrub some dirt and grime off her skin.

The peace was broken when Willow called out to her. Katrina turned and saw that Willow was much closer. According to her, Zach was gone.

"He left?"

Katrina stood up from the water's edge.

"Why? Did he have to go somewhere?"

[Melusine]

"I guess you could say that."

She waved the knife in front of Katrina. Her new prize for the success of the covert operation. It was a reward for the plan she had made, and it felt fucking good to get it to the end in one piece.

"He was totally plotting to steal my gun and all but," she said winking, "I managed to twist the situation into a trading one."

It was the truth. Willow was exceedingly good at telling the truth nowadays. It was just as simple as breathing. Just breathe in and out, speak, say the words, repeat. Just like that, Willow managed to live her life quietly. A quiet, small girl who didn't talk too much, who didn't breath too much, surprisingly made a killing in SOTF. It's funny how things turn out when someone is pushed to make efforts.

"I might have made up a story about you plotting to kill him to get him to run away and it worked!"

Her smile was gone.

"Sorry about that but," her voice was ridden by guilt, "I wanted to make sure he would leave without hurting me, you know?"

She didn't add the important fact that the gun was never loaded to begin with.

[Laurels]

Willow was waving the knife at Katrina, making her a bit nervous. She then explained that Zach was planning to rob them, and Willow was able to talk him down and send him away peacefully. Katrina was a bit upset to hear that. That was one more person who wanted nothing to do with them, and she was starting to hope he'd be someone they could stick around with going forward into the final stages.

But then Willow mentioned that she told Zach that Katrina wanted to kill him before sending him away. That gave Katrina serious pause. Willow didn't seem to find it that funny, more guilty that she did that. But still, Katrina needed to address that.

"Wait, why did you do that?" she asked.

Katrina knelt down to start picking up the water bottles.

"If you told him that, he's going to think that I'm dangerous or shady or was waiting for the chance to kill him. If we run into him again, he's going to have less reasons to trust me than before, and he'll likely try to kill us both."

Katrina tried to arrange the bottles in one arm, holding them close to her chest, as she brushed some hair behind her ear.

"I know you were trying to keep him away, but this seems like the sort of thing that could go horribly wrong for us later."

[MK Kilmarnock]

Well, at the very least, he'd been traveling light.

((Justin Greene, continued from Make Happy))

Ace showing up when he did forced Justin to abandon his bag, which meant abandoning his remaining supplies of food, water, the portion of his first aid kit he hadn't already wrapped around his mounting injuries, his spare clothes... everything. Earlier he'd been forced to abandon his rifle, but he still had two guns and the tire iron that'd seen him through it all. He'd been thankful to hold on to some means of staying alive. Nonetheless, the losses had been heavy, and a lot of the blame for what he'd been forced to lose could come down to one person.

No, not Ace. Ace had been the first wound and a constant source of trouble; Justin wished he'd managed to kill him back in the infirmary, but he was a jock so of COURSE the guy's skull was thick. And for that failure, he had some pepper in his ass. He could live with that. But now Ace had taken half of his vision. Justin didn't dare touch his wounded eye with any degree of pressure but as he gingerly brushed his fingertips against it, he got an idea for just how swollen it was. The eyeball was still there but when he moved it, it sent shooting pain through half of his face. Some blood had leaked out over his cheek but not nearly as much as he thought, and some flecks of dark brown stuff came out when he looked down. Tree bark? Of course he wasn't directly shot in the eye; that would have killed him instantly, Justin realized. Realizing he might keep his eye was of some small comfort, but it still left him with the use of only one eye for now.

But all that paled in comparison to the loss of an arm, which was to blame for the compounding losses thereafter. Shauna, then, was responsible. She'd removed an entire limb from play and, in doing so, Justin had one arm to defend himself with, to carry things, to attack. One arm to everybody else's two. And for what? What did Shauna get? She still died! Justin bemoaned the unfairness, the indignity at everything taking a downturn so fast because of a single failed play. The urge to give it all up with a screaming fit and shoot himself in the head, or throw himself off a cliff... he couldn't say they were tempting thoughts but they were present. Rather than submit to those thoughts, he buckled downand resolved to recover losses one thing at a time.

First, he would need water. He recalled this being the location of the lake, near to where he'd killed Nia and Johnny in the boat house. The structure caught his eye in the distance and Justin quickly averted his eye from it. No need to search. He knew what was in there.

Justin stumbled to the water's edge and knelt, closely inspecting the surface for anything that might make the water less palatable, like waste or insects or dead animals or the dead body of a student just below the surface. A dead body on land was a demoralizing find, especially if it was one he hadn't killed. A dead body underwater, well... that was just creepy. Finding nothing, Justin cupped a hand and dipped, sipping from it. Tasted... funky, like he was going to have the shits later, but it was water. It was life.

[Melusine]

"Yeah, it," she paused, considering her actions, "kinda does."

It was a gamble, really. Willow liked to gamble on stuff. It wasn't a hard decision, especially when there wasn't a lot to risk to begin with. Well, she did risk her life and possibly getting maimed, but in the grand scheme of thing, that wasn't worth a lot.

The entire fate of the gamble sat on Zach's shoulders now. It was up to him if he would start killing people that Willow couldn't get her hands on. It was part of the plan. Willow wanted to reach out and take down threats without even being in the same room as them, and if it involved Zach going around shooting with a shitty gun, then that was good enough. Willow's web didn't quite match up with the expectation she had, but it was only a matter of time because she set up a trap somewhere.

Katrina wasn't supposed to know this, though. If she ended up knowing that Willow was gunning for her to win, it would probably throw a big wrench in her plan. Her ally was the big selfless type of cried a lot when people got hurt, if she were to learn that Willow was vaguely planning to die for her, she would probably object to the entire plan.

So, Willow had to play the role.

"Yeah, I just panicked," Willow shook her head. With sadness painted over her face, she crossed her arms over her chest, "I just- I just like... I don't know."

She shrugged. Willow stuck her cleaver between the belt of her pants. She shook her head again, walking forward her ally to help her with the bottles.

"I just lie a lot when I'm nervous," she said softly, "it's a bad habit."

[Laurels]

Katrina had to be a bit worried about what Willow said to Zach. It was an intimidation tactic, and there was nothing wrong with that, but with such a small pool of students left and with fewer places to go, the chances of retaliation were getting higher.

"Okay, it's fine," Katrina said. "It could be a non-issue, but we'll just be prepared the next time we see him, if he took you seriously."

Katrina adjusted the bottles in her hands.

"Well, let's pack the water up and then gather our stuff," Katrina said. "We ought to..."

Katrina trailed off as she looked past Willow and down the shore line. A little ways down, there looked to be someone else. She couldn't make out who they were from here, but it looked like a guy.

"Um..." she continued.

Katrina swallowed the lump in her throat. The thoughts of retaliation came back to her. Could that guy over there be someone angry about Yuko or anyone else they encountered?

"There's someone over there. We probably should get our stuff before we figure out who that is."

[MK Kilmarnock]

Once he was finished eagerly slurping the water out of his hand, Justin took a moment to breathe and wipe his chin. In this moment, without his own slurping in his ears to cover up the ambience, he heard the faint sound of the one thing that could draw his attention quicker than anything else: speech. He didn't understand the words, as they were at a volume that rendered them unintelligible mutterings that gave nothing away beyond being vaguely English-sounding, vaguely feminine. A girl's voice, or a guy's voice if they had a particularly light voice as some guys did.

Not that gender mattered. As he recalled, a good deal of the deadliest killers on the island were girls, and it was a girl who gave him his most serious injury. It felt wrong, hating Shauna for that, but he did. Even though there was no sense in holding a grudge against a dead girl.

Justin turned toward the voices and did his best to focus with the one eye that could open. Two girls. He didn't recognize them yet, not at this distance, but they'd already noticed him. They hadn't attacked yet, which could have meant a couple things. They didn't recognize him, or they didn't have weapons. It was also possible they'd wait to get a little bit closer but if they had a gun, it hardly seemed likely to him without one or both of the prior things, because Justin knew that if he got the drop on himself, he wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger. He'd kill Ace if he saw him. He'd kill Michael if he saw him. Blaise... probably the same went for Blaise, but to be terribly honest with himself, Justin prayed he never ran into them again. By now, if anybody saw him and went 'that was Justin Greene', he was expecting them to kill. This wasn't like with Meka and Mackenzie anymore; nobody 'accidentally' kills ten people.

As Justin wearily got up, cradling the Madsen to his stomach and waiting for their approach, to see what they'd do and to see who they were, he tried to remember the names of those he'd killed. He wasn't sure what to think about the fact that some of them were getting a little tough to remember. Sometimes he'd see a face or a name but couldn't attach the other. Sometimes he had both. For two... the second person in the boathouse, and the person he shot along with Shauna, he struggled to remember either and, even then, Angie was just a name and a scream. Johnny was just a name and laughter, and the anger that came from it. He remembered more of how he felt rather than the person he beat to death.

Justin tried not to think about it anymore.

[Melusine]

"Mhm," was Willow's only response to the person, revealing himself to be a bloodied Justin was the person in front of them, stumbling toward them, clutching his gun like a toy. He was mangled like a piece of meat stuck between the canines of a wolf. The thin bandages covering the arm was doing nothing to hold him back together. But broken into pieces, Justin was still walking.

There was something admirable about that. Willow might have found it kinda cool if Katrina wasn't a wide-eyed idealist. Instead, there was this gnawing anxiety pulling at her stomach, weighing it down into the ground. Willow had just swapped out her gun for a knife that was laying on the ground.

"Kat, I think saw this in a horror movie" she said without any emotions in her voice but with a grim smile covering her lips, "this is the scene where we die."

She took a step back. Preparing herself to run for the treeline, she turned back toward Katrina. But she couldn't leave, Katrina was still there.

Fuck Katrina.

She tried to convince herself to run, to leave her. Katrina was an useless piece of garbage who should have died instead of Sierra. She was worth nothing more than someone to hold Willow's bags and watch over while she slept. There wasn't anything tying her back to Katrina. She hated her. Willow hated her with every cells of her body.

She wanted her dead, but yet, she didn't run. She couldn't. Fuck Katrina. Fuck her and her fucking kindness and her fucking patience. Fuck you, Willow wanted to say, but she didn't because she couldn't. The words were there. She could say the letters but the words wouldn't come out.

Katrina was supposed to be a pawn but she had become her central piece. It wasn't fucking fair. Sierra was supposed to be here, she was supposed to be the win condition. Why did it have to be Katrina? Willow wanted to go back in time to push Katrina in front of Jonathan but she couldn't. She fucking loved Katrina, but she wanted her to suffer. It didn't make sense. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fucking fair!

She sighed, raising her arms.

"Run," she said, ready to throw her bottles at him.

[Laurels]

Katrina looked a bit confused when she saw the guy coming closer. Willow started talking about a horror movie, which caused Katrina to do a double take at her friend and the approaching guy.

She looked at him, noticing the blood, the gun, and the general wear and tear on him. It was hard to place a name to his face, so she tried as hard as she could to think of it. There were only around 30 people left, so there had to be some idea of who it could be. She tried to think of the names on the announcements, of people she saw on the trip, of people mentioned in passing conversation.

"Justin."

That's when it finally connected to her. Willow was telling her to run.

And yet, Katrina was hesitating. She had no idea why. She was unarmed except for water bottles, and her weapons were back at the bike.

"Oh god..." she muttered to herself.

[MK Kilmarnock]

They were already getting defensive. Justin couldn't blame them, but was it too much to ask for to just have somebody welcome him with open arms? ... Yeah, it probably was.

One girl stood at the ready. Justin got closer and the shapes of her face made more sense. Willow. The other one looked like a deer in headlights. Katrina. Gorgeous, musically talented, gorgeous... again. They were both really pretty. Why was everybody left on this island either a pretty girl or Ace? Justin chewed on his lip in agitation as he clutched the gun to his chest. Neither looked to have a gun, though Willow had something in her hands... he couldn't quite figure out what it was. A bottle? A grenade? Tear gas?

His footsteps slowed and he rocked his weight from leg to leg, looking a little bit like he had the shits when he walked due to the slight waddle it had induced. Maybe it looked dumb, but he figured it would be the smart thing to do to be ready to lunge one way or the next if he had to.

"I just wa-augh, your food, and your- some water!" Justin croaked, clearing his throat from some extra moisture back from taking a sip of cool water. But he'd need more, or at least something to carry water away from this place in. They had supplies, it looked like. Much more than they needed. The supplies were more important.

But he had no particular qualms about killing them over it.