Survival Of The Fittest

"WHAT!?" Karin shrieked, her mouth acting without waiting for permission from her brain.

How the hell did that happen!? Choi was still babbling when Karin ran off, wasn't she? She'd been lying there, but she hadn't... had she? It was all foggy, and Karin been getting choked at the time - what was she supposed to do, take notes?

Karin's eyes went wide, and she started shaking again. She took a few steps back, holding the bag closer to herself, clutching the drill for dear life. Skeevie was close. Way too close. Looking at her like she couldn't decide if Karin was a threat or a target. Shit. SHIT. Was she always this big? The rest of the announcements were ringing out but Karin couldn't hear a word of them. She backed off further. "Listen! I didn't... I didn't know! She... She came at me... a-and I just hit her and ran off, I-I didn't know she was DEAD!"

"Look, I'm not... I'm not gonna... I just want to find Victor. Just ask Claire where he is, and I'll leave. I'll... I'll tell you where Kelsey is, and I'll leave."

After Choi came Chao. Evie wasn't listening. If she was, she might've put two and two together and remembered that strange boy and his strange pasta party.

No, Evie was laser focused on Karin and her bag. Karin had shot someone two days prior. She'd bludgeoned someone else yesterday. She was insisting it wasn't on purpose. Being that she had a gun, it did seem to make sense that she hadn't actually intended lethal force, since she could've been certain otherwise.

A self-aware acknowledgement that they couldn't make a good joke out of the name Kilgore. If Evie had been listening, she'd probably be irritated by it, pointing out that you're not funny isn't funny itself. But she only had ears for Karin. Karin backed up. Evie moved without thought, purely instinct, keeping the gap close. If she pulled the gun, Evie had to be ready. Her calves felt like tensed springs, her body seemingly reading itself as if for a race, ready to dive and make waves. Evie never thought of Otter Mode as anything but a cute swimming thing, but somewhere in the back of her mind was that video she'd seen of a pack of small-clawed otters fucking up a crocodile. She didn't think of herself as particularly vicious, she too was cute and fuzzy on the surface, but she'd cultivated a body well suited to predation all the same.

Something registered about Rebekah, that sweetheart she'd voted for prom queen. Evie was distracted briefly. Karin made some distance. Yet she did seem sincere, she wasn't moving to arm herself, just defend herself.

While Danya spoke of Perante Losoa's collar-assisted suicide, Karin seemed to deflate. She reiterated the offer.

Matthew Bell killed Ren Vu, with a gun apparently. Evie took a deep breath and took a single step forwards. She didn't want to look threatening, she also didn't want to be too far from Karin, her second double-killer acquaintance in as many days.

Salem Fox was last, a gun again, Timothy Adams the victim, that tankie MMA guy she sort-of knew from sharing gym space. Salem won a prize for it.

Evie McKown, for her part, held up the Walkie-Talkie.

"Okay. Neither of us wants a fight, right? Just... just show me your gun isn't loaded, uh, put the, the fucking, the clip in your bag and the actual gun somewhere else, I don't know, whatever shows me you're not gonna shoot me when my back's turned. Deal?"

Under ordinary circumstances, Karin would probably have taken a perverse amount of joy in the fact that weird animal-loving Rebekah Hayes had been killed by someone with a surname like Lion, that every member of WAP was now officially a murderer, and that Perante Losoa was now Perante Lose-oa. But there were bigger concerns at the moment, and Karin.exe was not responding.

What the hell was Evie talking about? What gun?

She... Oh. She'd shot Ashlee. So Evie thought she had a gun.

Well, crap.

See, this right here. This was why Karin lied. Because truth liked to put on a robe of coincidences and make itself look like a lie. How the hell was anybody gonna believe that she'd accidentally murdered two separate people in two separate incidents of self-defense? How the hell was anybody gonna believe that she shot a cheerleader to death and then lost the gun after hitting herself in the face with it? What was the point of telling stories that nobody would believe, just because they happened to be true? Josh would probably have laughed himself hoarse if he could see this playing out.

So what were her options here? Tell Skeevie that she didn't have a gun, open herself up to attack? No way! Karin could see her edging closer, trying to close the gap between them.

"All right. All right. Just... back off."

She took another few steps away, trying to keep out of Skeevie's range. Crap. What was she gonna do here? Skeevie wasn't the brightest bulb in the marquee, but she probably wasn't stupid enough fall for Karin removing the drill's battery pack and pretending it was a clip of bullets.

"Okay... Okay. How about this? I'll stay over here, and I'll leave my weapon in the bag and keep my hands behind my head. No way for me to reach for it without you seeing. Then even if I try something, you've got room to run away."

As the seconds wore on, the pieces seemed to fall into place. It started making more sense. She hadn't questioned it before, but now Evie was supremely suspicious of Karin's assertion that Victor had taken "everything but her weapon", not least of all because of the surprise and panic that seemed to grip her when Evie suggested disarming.

On the one hand, it could be that she feared being attacked right after. If she shoved all the bullets in the bottom of her bag, true, what was there to stop Evie from just jumping her? Made sense. But also Victor had literally had a gun last time Evie saw him. It had slid under the radar a little compared to Fitz and his boomstick, but still, it had been right there. No, Karin had been bluffing all along. Not that she could blame her, who wouldn't imply having a nuclear option when facing someone of Evie's physique? Besides someone just as big or bigger, obviously. It all made sense. Moreover though, it put the final nail in the coffin of the notion of teaming up to try and get the drop on Fitz and Victor. Evie had already more or less trashed that plan, but now the trash can was also on fire.

Or maybe it was the first thing.

Evie sighed, and took the gamble.

"Victor took it, didn't he?"

Still, they had a deal. Evie was a girl of her word.

"Me again Claire, had a bit of a thing so if you answered, I missed it... you there? Over."

"Yes," said Karin, automatically. "He... He took it."

Props to Skeevie for doing all the heavy lifting on this one. Yeah, sure, she didn't have a gun because Victor took it. Seemed legit. No point in adding an extraneous details if Evie was gonna do a full Danganronpa manga solution in her head about it. And if Evie thought that she was unarmed, well, that just meant that Karin would have the element of surprise if and when she pulled out the drill. Win-win.

She looked ashamed, and kicked softly at the dirt while she waited for Claire to reply.

The gamble paid off, Karin pretty quickly admitted to not really having a gun. Maybe a little too quickly, actually. Would she double-bluff like that, set it up in advance that she might be bluffing, just to confound Evie later down the line? No, it didn't make sense to have had a plan like that prepared in advance to spring as soon as she stumbled upon someone unexpectedly. Easier to run with the more likely explanation, the one that didn't require lots of unlikely assumptions to be true. Still, worth staying on guard in case she was playing some kind of game with Evie.

Either way, Evie turned the volume up on her radio to ensure Karin would hear whatever the response might be. After a brief pause, a voice ensued from the speaker, one much more pleasing to hear than Tracen Danya’s. Evie apologised for ghosting her the previous day, made vague excuses. Claire went on to detail how the remaining three had parted ways shortly after Evie had gone - roughly where she herself was now, and which directions she’d last seen Victor and Fitz travelling in from where she’d last seen them. Not the most complete information to go on, but it certainly narrowed things down.

"Well, you heard her."

Evie stowed the Walkie-Talkie back in her pocket for the time being. Even with Karin seemingly unarmed, it felt sensible to have both hands free.

"So where'd you see Kelsey?"

Karin nodded. She pulled out her map, and checked the location as best she could while still keeping the drill close to hand. It wasn't going to be a small area to search, but it was a much better shot than she was ever likely to get again. If she wanted her sunglasses, now would be the time. Which, of course, left the awkward matter of telling Evie where to find Kelsey. It'd have to be somewhere where she could plausibly have gone in the intervening days, and somewhere that wouldn't awkwardly result in her and Evie traveling the same direction for too long.

The trapping camp she'd spent the night at was a relatively safe location. There'd been enough signs of traffic through the area that it'd be plausible for Kelsey to have come and gone, without it being an obvious lie.

"All right, Kelsey was here. At the abandoned trapping camp. There were a few people passing through, but it was kind of like, a neutral rest area. Not a lot of fighting, just people chatting about the game and who they were looking for. Me. Daniel Ozanne, Wendy Kennedy. Josh James - look out for him if you're traveling alone, by the way. Kelsey got there right around the time I was leaving, and Wendy Kennedy was laying into me for what happened to Ashlee, so I didn't really talk to her much. Didn't think that Kelsey would be super sympathetic to my cause, you know? Being a fellow cheerleader and all. So I left, and made my way up here. If she decided to stay at the camp for a while, you might still be able to find her."

She took a step back. "So we're all squared away now, yeah?"

Just like that?

Karin’s story passed the subconscious vibe check such that Evie didn’t even consciously consider questioning it. They’d had a deal, and no particular reason to lie to each other, right? Besides that, despite the pervasive tension, Evie felt no desire to break the truce; why would she? Karin had nothing of great value to take besides food, even if Evie was desperate to cross the “kill at least one person” requirement off her to-do list early, it wouldn’t be worth the risk, however minimal. In truth, it barely occurred to her to start anything, only to be wary of Karin choosing otherwise.

“Yeah, guess so. Uh… good luck, I guess?”

The tension evolved had somewhat: the threat of violence still loomed, but now it had the much more mundane dimension of the uncertainty as to who leaves first. Evie elected to cut that proverbial knot.

“Guess I hope I don’t see you around, thinking about it.”

Then she set off. She chose a slightly circuitous route, giving the silent offer for Karin to make her own move alone. Maybe she’d stop at the Listening Station on the way out, maybe she’d just circle the nearest building and head off once Karin was out of sight. Didn’t really matter, at least she had a destination.

[Evie McKown breaks out of her unstable orbit.]

Pretty rude of Skeevie to say that out loud, but the feeling was mutual enough that Karin let it pass.

"Good luck," she said quietly.

Much as Karin hated to see other people all happy and sappy and romantic, she wasn't completely inhuman. Skeevie hadn't tried to kill her, or assault her, or stand by stupidly while someone else did one or both of those things; technically that made her the closest thing she had to a BFF out here. So, yeah. Some small part of her would be minorly okay with the idea of Evie and Kelsey reuniting and doing the sloppy dramatic kiss thing and making a few conservative heads in the audience explode. And then she'd be okay with them both falling off a cliff or something, as was the fate befitting all couples.

She took a deep breath and shook the heebie jeebies out. Time to focus on the task at hand. One, find Victor. Two, get the sunglasses. Three... Kill Victor, sorry Victor, then head back down to the Hunting Lodge Bar and wait for all this to blow over? Maybe. She'd have to think about it. Victor and Fitz both had guns, so if it came down to it, she'd go for a sneaky grab and get the hell out. All of that was assuming she could even find them, of course...

((Karin Han continued in the answer to this thread's titular question))