Survival Of The Fittest

...what a strange time to be laughing. What would anyone have to laugh about in the middle of a firefight, unless they were, to quote a certain Percival Cox, coo-coo pants. Or maybe the targets had fled or something. That would make more sense, Ema was pretty sure Hayley hadn't gone off the deep end just yet.

Turns out hitting the proverbial dirt - more like grass and sawdust really, but that's a digression - was a waste of time, because just as soon as the one with the rifle returned fire, a mere single shot, she and her still-standing friend scarpered, leaving the downed boy where he lay. Ema assumed from that that he was either dead, or irredeemably about to be.

So why did that seem comforting to her? She told herself it was because it meant he didn't suffer, or at least not for long. She wasn't sure it was true, though.

"Well, girly. Now I think it's time to see what's left."

But of course, to the victor go the spoils, and all that jazz. Doubtful they'd leave anything dangerous behind for the probably-deranged-in-their-eyes Hayley to grab, but there might be extra food or water if they'd neglected to grab the boy's daypack. Ema took a few moments to straighten herself up, still residually cautious about showing her head above the treestump, and followed behind Hayley and Kyle to see what loot they'd be raking in.

"Ah, fuck,"

Nothing good, then. Just a weird-shaped sword.

"They must've taken everything. Ah, well, you know, none of us have eaten much, we should be fine on supplies for a while. The only thing I really need restocking on is cigarettes..."

Ema shook her head, bringing an open palm to her face, but didn't say anything. Of all the times to be addicted to anything, it had to be here and now.

"This sword's pretty sweet, though. Better than a knife,"

Made sense, Kyle gets first refusal when all he has is a knife, compared to a big-ass scimitar-kinda-thing and a handgun. Though, switching for something that looked a lot lighter and easier to handle did appeal. Still, Ema didn't mention it. She felt like mentioning "What the actual fuck, why did you just start shooting?", but she didn't do that either.

Helpfully enough, Hayley felt like bringing the subject up herself.

Now maybe she was easily lead on, and somewhat aware of the fact, but the more the other girl spoke, the more Ema found herself agreeing, ceasing to argue with the voice of... brutal reason? that had been telling her the same thing the whole time. The flattery and optimistic phrasing certainly helped, too. That small, seemingly-reasonable, voice still argued, though. "It's still murder, you can't just justify that by some warped Nuremburg Defence." "And what other options are there, then? Lay down and die? In winning, the deaths get to be for something, they get to be for me going home!"

And Ema was moderately sure the winners met Danya at the end, even if it ended in failure, taking a run at him was a rather appealing prospect. If only to say she'd tried.

The problem, of course, was responding. In her lost-in-thoughts few seconds, the expressions running across her face had been on autopilot, showing plenty of half-agreement, half-conflict. It was probably clear she was in agreement on some level, and decrying Hayley as an uncaring monster on another. Time to pick a side and articulate the decision.

"I, eh..."

Ema instantly regretted speaking up first, and not waiting to let Kyle say something. Taking his lead would have been a hell of a lot easier to do. Taking his lead would've been cheap and cowardly, too.

"You're... you're right. If we just roll over and die now, everyone that's died so far, it's been for nothing, right? Sure whoever survives longest deserves to go home, but... that whoever should be one of us, someone who's at least given it thought, and regretted it, and... and isn't just some axe-crazy whacko, right?"

So many "right?"s, so much hoping for reassurance. Ema hoped she didn't come off as indecisive, or a liability at worst. She never had been great at speeches, and that had probably been the longest thing she'd said uninterrupted for the last five days.

She just wanted to get home. And if that wasn't possible, she wanted it to be someone that deserved it, in more than just a survival context.

[[OOC: Skipping Dete with permission, to get this thread rolling and such.]]

"You're... you're right. If we just roll over and die now, everyone that's died so far, it's been for nothing, right? Sure whoever survives longest deserves to go home, but... that whoever should be one of us, someone who's at least given it thought, and regretted it, and... and isn't just some axe-crazy whacko, right?"

Those were literally the most beautiful words Hayley Kelly had ever heard in her entire life ever. Well, not literally, since she'd heard better things before, probably, and not literally because words couldn't really be beautiful, but they sort of could, like if you were a writer or whatever, but none of that mattered right now because the point was, her ex-girlfriend best friend wasn't about to crucify her. Hayley loved those moments where she wasn't being crucified, they were colorful and warm and full of awkward UST, or at least that was her life right now, here on Survival of the Fittest.

Hayley's brain was a confusing place.

...Anyways.

"Exactament! Oh, Ema, honeybee, thank you thank you thank you, I could just about kiss you right now-" Wait, that was actually the worst thing she could have possibly said and all three of them knew it. She stopped dead hah, not yet thank you mid-thought and started over. "Or not. Anyway, I'm just...glad you see my point, yeah? I mean, I've killed four people. Four. People have gotten the death penalty for less. If I die now, what was the point of any of that, really? I'm just trying to get home- or get one of us home, at least," she added hastily, realizing how bad that sounded on its own. "There's just no real non-shitty options here, unfortch. Nothing much I can do about that..."

She shrugged and looked back down at the body, not waiting for Kyle's response. After all, she wasn't worried about him. He was more worried about the danger they were putting themselves in by having her as a named killer than at her actually being a killer, and the cat was well out of that particular bag. And he was still here. Hayley let the warm fuzzies take her over for a moment- I know such amazing people though. Sticking with me through all of this...- before allowing them to dissipate for good. Looking at the body helped with that. Flies were beginning to land already. Ewh. And...what was that?

Another body. Oh, joy. She hadn't spotted him before, given that he'd already been dead, but now that she was noticing the flies, they were landing one this one too. Apparently the girls she'd chased off were killers themselves, or maybe the boy she'd just killed was. That made her feel at least a little better, not that she was having much of a guilt problem.

"So, we ought to get out of here, yeah? It's gonna be dark pretty soon," Hayley said, nodding towards the sun, which was dipping towards the west- she'd estimate it was 5 PM or so. "I don't really want to sleep here with dead boys Senior and Junior, in all honesty."

"Exactament! Oh, Ema, honeybee, thank you thank you thank you, I could just about kiss you right now-"

Ema was taken aback, and automatically pulled a rather quizzical face at the overboard response. After all, she'd said what she'd said because it was the best way to save her own skin. All the time she'd been travelling with Hayley and Kyle, she'd not received a single injury, despite the string of fatal confrontations they'd been involved in. Then again, Hayley herself wasn't to know that. And it wasn't entirely untrue to say she had more than just practical reasons to stick around, and the "kiss you" part certainly appealed to those reasons.

"Oh just admit it to yourself, the original reason you stuck around was 'cause you still want her."

It was at about that point in her train of thought that Ema realised Hayley was still talking. She'd gone off on a tangent, again, so the most important part was probably still to come. Hopefully. She remembered that she still had that unusual expression on her face, corrected to a more neutral look, and paid attention.

"or get one of us home, at least,"
"There's just no real non-shitty options here, unfortch. Nothing much I can do about that..."

As much as it all basically added up to the Nuremburg defense, Ema couldn't argue, it was a position she'd recently taken herself. Just following orders from your survival instinct is a pretty legitimate reason to do anything, and in the history of SotF, none of the winners had ever been held responsible for what they'd done. They were pitied, seen as victims of circumstance. And Ema knew why, now that she'd been forced to agree that kill or be killed was the only winning mentality, first hand.

Again, Ema was forced to stop herself mid-thoughts and pay attention to what was going on around her. She could argue she was safe, for the moment, but spacing out wasn't a habit she wanted to fall into. She looked around. Kyle seemed rather placid, Hayley was investigating the corpse...s, upon closer inspection, there was a second, which had apparently been there the whole time. Made attacking the other group feel retroactively like less of a bad thing to do.

"So, we ought to get out of here, yeah? It's gonna be dark pretty soon, I don't really want to sleep here with dead boys Senior and Junior, in all honesty."

Good point. The sun was going down, and the two bodies would start to smell awful pretty soon. Better to head somewhere nice and secluded, and rest up for yet another day of defying death.

"Yeah, we should really get a move on."

Beat.

"God, this is really our life now, isn't it?"

Wait, did she say that out loud? Oh well.

[When we roll out, feel free to GM Ema leaving too, whoever posts last, so I don't have to make a crappy short post for it.]

((Apologies for the tardiness of this post.))

Kyle barely gave the dead boy a glance. He didn't matter, really. Just one less person between them and victory, right?

Right.

More interesting was the other dead boy. This one was older- covered in flies, although it hadn't started to rot yet.

He turned away from it, to look at Hayley. She was talking about how happy she was that Ema had decided that killing was the only way to survive. Good for her, he supposed. Also, she said they should probably leave, and find someplace to bed down.

"Agreed. It's getting late, and we shouldn't sleep out in the open. What if it rained?"

[[OOC: crappy short exit post go]]

Hayley lost Kyle's words- neutral, non-threatening words, words she didn't need to worry about- in light of Ema's near-unconscious observation.

"God, this is really our life now, isn't it?"

Seems that way.

Hayley began to walk, her gun, dearest Vera hanging loosely in her grasp. This was her life. She was the girl with the gun. She'd killed four people. Two with this gun and two with the wicked-ass sword sitting in Ema's hand. She was wandering around on this island with the two people who, under other circumstances, she'd most want naked and on top of her, only instead of trying to fuck them she was trying to get them to be...not dead. Not that I'd mind the former...

This was her life.

It was getting kind of old.

With a quick look at Ema and Kyle, making sure they were following her, she began to walk into the setting sun.







Oh, Maddy...Alex. Where are you...?


[[Hayley Kelly, Ema Ryan and Kyle Portman continued in Without Love, It Cannot Be Seen]]

[[END OF THREAD]]