Survival Of The Fittest

Meena kept walking, neither slower nor faster than before - which wasn’t very fast.

He expected Ren to leave him in the dirt, and they did. Let it be known that cynicism made you suffer twice, not once. Maybe if he’d reacted more enthusiastically, he’d believe these idiots’ hype enough to run after them. Maybe if he joined the hug, Ren wouldn’t be so eager to leave him behind. (Because they were eager to leave him behind, obviously. A better friend, and a better murderer, had presented herself.)

Kitty was lucky, all things considered. Kitty had always been lucky, even when she probably believed she was cursed or something. Even her tragedies were blessings in the end.

He stopped a few steps before Kitty - and now Kai and Ren threw themselves at her.

(They’d be doing that a lot, throwing themselves away for Kitty, in the coming days.)

He made himself known, again. No energy, no malice… Well, a bit of malice, actually, in the way his voice dropped ever so slightly, in how he slightly narrowed his eyes, in how the blood streaked across his face felt just slightly fresher and hotter.

“Kitty.”

Katelyn finally opened her eyes, seeing Ren hanging off of her.

"Ren... you're here too... I can't believe..."

Tears poured from her eyes like a leaky faucet, so overwhelmed she was by it all. Her friends had found her, and she had actually gotten to see them all again, one last time. She didn't deserve this kindness, least of all for the cruel acts she had done to make it happen. Still, this was real, and she was so thankful for it.

She clung harder to Kai, squeezing him with all her might, never wanting to let go. Instead, she merely basked in the warmth of her friend's hugs, letting it soothe and heal the many wounds, physical and emotional, that she had accumulated. Then she opened her eyes, and met Meena's own, his gaze burning a hole straight through her. He was covered in blood. What happened since they were separated?

"M-Meena?"

“Hi. Again.”

Kitty had amassed quite the collection since Meena last saw her. On his own end, he didn’t take anything from Millie. Was a shotgun not enough? (In the calculus of this game, one gun = however many blades Kitty carried, but also a shotgun < a grenade launcher. Where the hell did she get a grenade launcher from? See? Kitty was, in fact, a lucky bastard.)

He stepped forward, expecting the hug to disperse sooner or later, maybe because of his own awful energy. That’d be nice. That’d be horrible. That’d be wonderful, for him, but pointless, maybe.

“I’ve been dying to catch up with you,” Meena said, dryly enough that it might be mistaken for a joke. “Explain myself a bit before anyone-” he eyed Ren for just a second, “-gets to sugarcoat it.”

Even that was sugarcoating what Meena really meant. Ren would talk over him, not for his own sake but theirs. Ren would lie for him. He would have preferred any other sin for his (nominal) sake.

“I’d ask what you were up to, too, but we all already know.” And with that, he paused, letting Kitty get some poisoned words in. Put on her makeup and kitty-cat ears and pretend. Ren and Kai (and California) would eat it up of course, but nobody else did, or ever would, or ever had - Meena realized that now, that he had slightly misjudged his classmates on the first day.

It was as though something vital had suddenly shattered in their chest. Ren raised their head away from the comfort and warmth of Kitty's shoulder. They had been indulgent--indulgent and stupid. So very, very stupid.

"Meena."

Ren's voice was low, quiet. It was a warning, but even moreso, it was a plea.

Katelyn stared at Meena as he spoke, then ever so slowly let her arms relax her death grip on Kai. She didn't let go, not yet, but Meena had altered the mood of their meeting just enough that her attention was drawn away.

"Y-Yeah, I, uh," she stammered. "A lot has h-happened."

She didn't want to get into her myriad of savageries and transgressions, not right now. She would have to eventually, but she wanted this moment of comfort to last as long as it could. Even if it was temporary, like all moments were, she would cling to it for as long as the universe would allow it.

"What, um, do you mean by explaining yourself?" she asked, trying not to stare at the blood smeared on his face, idly wondering if the brutality on display was how she appeared to everyone else.

“Explaining why I did what I did. On the first day I mean.” He pointed at the blood on his face, pointedly excluding Ren from his sight as he did. “You’ll find out about this later. Whatever it sounds like, it was probably worse in reality.”

It was already easy to guess that Danya did not portray any of Kitty’s murders as they “actually” happened, but Meena hoped that he’d have a hard time making “shot someone buried under rubble five fucking times and then clubbed their corpse into a pulp” sound even worse than it already was.

Actually, Meena wondered if Kitty really was as bad as the announcements made her sound - like a rabid cat. Well, maybe. A rabid animal couldn’t help itself, it simply clawed and bit and suffered. A rabid cat wasn’t a misbehaving cat, or a malicious cat, that required higher thought and intention that it just didn’t have. It would be put down all the same.


And it was then that it all clicked.


You see, when Meena misjudged his classmates, he did so by assuming none of them were raring to kill Kitty right off the bat, when… duh, of course they were. They were annoyed by Kitty. Annoyance meant dislike meant hatred meant you wanted her gone forever. There was no point in differentiating the stages when they all lead right down to the epicenter of the black hole in the end. (See: Ren and Meena's relationship.)

Kitty wasn’t brave or evil or even murderous, per se. What else could you even expect of her? Yet, he hesitated to judge her actions as self defense. Those weren’t the right words, but an exoneration.

“I wasn’t offering you an alibi to be nice,” he began by telling the truth.

“I did it to prove a point,” he lied, then burying the truth once more in that lie said “And I was ready to die making it.”

Besides, was it really a lie if it retroactively made sense? “And not gonna lie, all the evidence I have right now is still in favour of that point.”

Katelyn's arms slowly relaxed off of Kai, just barely keeping hold of him now. Meena had completely dominated her attention, stealing it away from her reunion. Her gaze scanned him like one would a stranger in a dark alley. So they were both killers, but he wanted to talk about what happened on the first day? Why was he bringing this up now, and why did it even matter anymore? What exactly did he want?

"You're being k-kinda ominous," she murmured, now unable to take her eyes off the blood on his face.

She swallowed the lump in her throat, letting her head rest against Kai's chest for comfort. He was here, so everything would be okay, she reminded herself.

"What was the p-point, then? Do you w-want something from me?"

Meena frowned, and stared slightly past Kitty in contemplation, slightly at the sky (annoyingly beautiful, despite everything).

That was the wrong question to ask. There were a lot of things Kitty had that Meena wanted, but he wasn’t dumb. He never hugged Ren, never killed until just recently, never had any of the infamy and love that Kitty had for a reason. Like a black hole, like a cat that didn’t have to do anything other than sit around looking cute for people to fawn over her, Meena couldn’t compete. And so eliminating all the things that Kitty had over Meena, he had nothing to ask for, and yet nothing over her.

Except, maybe he did.

Stuttering, cowering with her voice, probably on the verge of tears at all times on the inside. Aside from the blood, Kitty hadn’t changed all that much from the first day. And what was a rabid animal above everything else? Scared. Meena was not scared - of dying, of consequences, of blood or car crashes or all his friends abandoning him, and that was what he had over her. Over everyone, actually.

He was braver than her, and he could prove it right now. In his mind’s eye he readjusted the rear view mirror, and the constant spectre was right behind him. Little did she know it, but Kitty’s appearance took away anything that Meena would have had to lose.

He lowered his gaze from the sky, to look at Kitty properly again.

“Sure, actually. Can I borrow your knife? Or Robin’s knife, whatever, who cares. You know the one.” He shrugged. “You can have it back after. I just need it to show you something.”

At this point Kai felt he had to step in. He couldn’t work out what point Meena was leading up to, but like Kitty had said, she was being… ominous. The knots in the pit of his stomach and the hollow of his chest that had unwound momentarily now tightened up all over again. He probably never would stop feeling ill at ease here.

He was firm, but not aggressive, with the arm that he held out to separate Kitty from Meena. “Look,” he said, voice low, “I don’t really understand what happened between you two, but-” But Meena already had a gun, so why ask for a knife? Something like that maybe. Something in the way Meena had looked at her and how she barely looked at Kai and Ren at all.

“What do you want to show us?” He tried for placating. Gentle. The tone of voice that had never been taken enough to de-escalate arguments back in his memory. One he could only hope would convey to Meena that whatever she was feeling, they weren’t her enemies.

Save for the tightening of their arms around Kitty, Ren didn’t move at all. They had gone very, very, still.

“Don’t,” Ren whispered. They weren’t sure if they were speaking to Kitty or Meena. Kitty, probably; their voice couldn’t have carried to Meena. “Please. Don’t do it.”

The hair on the back of Katelyn's neck stood on end, her hackles starting to raise. She let go of Kai fully as Ren tightened their grip. She blinked a few times at Meena, glancing between his face and the shotgun, and then replied in a low, apologetic voice.

"Um, R-Ren doesn't want me to do that. So I won't. S-Sorry."

Meena was behaving strangely, even for him. It didn't take much influence from Kai and Ren to influence her decision. Her only worry was that Meena would shoot at them, and then their happy reunion, or at least what little was left of it, would be all over. If it came to that, if he raised that weapon with the intent to hurt any of them, then Katelyn would cut him down herself. Ren and Kai might not like it, but she would do anything to protect them. Anything at all.

"W-Why do you want it, exactly?"

“That’s okay.” The words were automatic, and their tone was automatically polite, light. It didn’t mean anything other than that his parents’ programming was still hardwired into his vocal chords.

His boots crunched in the snow as he walked. “I was just thinking about… how you had no reason to like very many people before all this. And they, for the most part, didn’t like you either.”

That much was true. Right?

There were two blades dropped in the snow, both nasty looking. He stared down at them for a moment, between friends (hah) and weaponry. They were a world removed from kitchen knives and corkboard pins in function, yet they still made him bristle just to look at. But what, exactly, did he have to fear?

He gingerly placed the shotgun down in the snow, a hundred times deadlier than any blade Meena avoided back home. In exchange, he picked up the curved blade - it reminded him of home in a different way. When he was seven, the family visited relatives in rural Bangladesh, and he saw uncles hacking at coconuts with a larger version of this sort of machete.

He took it into his hand, he stood up. He turned to the other three - and then took a few steps back from them. Their fear was obvious, and maybe rational, but they didn’t have anything to fear either. The only thing they had to lose was something they probably wanted to lose, deep down, anyway. The replacement was already here, after all.

“Let me guess - if you did give my alibi to anyone, they didn’t believe you?”

Katelyn flinched when Meena picked up the machete, so carelessly left on the ground as it had been. Was this it, then? Was Meena about to kill her with it, just like she had feared? Her fingers twitched, the muscles in her legs tensing up, ready for a fight. If he wanted to kill someone here, why not just use the shotgun? This didn't make any sense. What game was he playing?

"M-Mitch he- I think he did," she replied automatically, unable to leave a question unanswered. "When he attacked me, and before I k- killed him."

Already speaking of her past mistakes, and barely any time had passed. Surely she would have to tell them about the others now, too. There was little doubt in her mind that they would ask, of course they would. Yet, there were slightly more pressing matters to attend to, right now.

"Pl-Please-" her voice shook, then she stopped and took a deep breath to steady herself.

She was far past asking nicely.

"Don't hurt anyone with that," she demanded, polite but firm.

Meena listened in silence, machete hanging in his grip. He wished he could smile at Kitty’s answer. His lips twitched, and managed no more.

“But he still attacked you, and you still killed him.”

He didn’t answer the question, but offered one of his own, the machete swinging idly by his side. “Answer honestly. Do you think you’re a bad person?”

Katelyn looked Meena dead in the eye, frozen in place, unable to understand why any of this was happening.

"I don't know," was all she could answer.