Survival Of The Fittest

"Real happy,"

He kept a stern look on his face as the boy paid more attention to the stuff going on further down the hall. Andrew had half a mind to walk over there and drag whatever they were staring at out from its hiding space, but with how shaken up people sounded, he wouldn't test that limit.

Instead, Andrew kept his eyes on the boy, but his eyes widened when he heard the other scream. He quickly turned his head towards the stairs and couldn't see anything immediate, but something fucking weird was going on down there.

He turned back to pinky and asked:

"You sure you didn't see anything else?"

Andrew gave Adam a sarcastic quip and a glare, which he politely ignored.

Wendy and Shawn confirmed what Adam already knew; there was a dying girl in the adjacent room. The real question was, what were they gonna do with the soon-to-be corpse?

Wendy may have echoed Shawn’s earlier statement about how the mystery girl was a goner, but the look on her face suggested otherwise. Little wonder why Shawn seemed keen on convincing everyone that the girl was beyond saving.

Fucking whatever. He’ll go investigate the girl himself. He began to make his way over, “Let me take a look.”

Shawn was rambling about putting the girl down when another scream from downstairs caused Adam to flinch. Shawn and Andrew immediately questioned Adam, like he knew fucking anything.

“Like I said,” Adam glanced back to Andrew, then to Shawn, “I came into an empty dining room, the only thing out of place being a misplaced chair. Look, maybe someone’s in the kitchen, I don’t know. Didn’t check there.”

Adam turned on his heels back to Andrew, a smile on his face, “You wanna go check what’s going on? One of us can go with you.”

He’d rather not be that person, but maybe there’s another corpse-but-not downstairs, waiting to be looted.

Another scream from down stairs. What is going on down there? Thinking about it was making Wendy even more anxious. She didn't want to imagine the worst case scenario, but in a situation like this, it was hard not to. Between that, and the girl under the bed, she didn't want to stay here and wait for something bad to come her way.

"I don't want to stay here," Wendy muttered.

Wendy turned back towards the room and it looked like the girl was trying to get up. She looked like a mess, but maybe there was a chance she was going to be okay. Wendy would have liked to help, but she wasn't sure if she could take care of this girl herself.

"Uhh, what should we do about her?," Wendy asked, trying to get the boys' attention towards the girl.

The girl. The body. The person.

(Zhijuan were all of these things, all at once.)

(Disagreeing about it only meant you didn't get the whole picture.)

(It's not like Zhijuan would blame you.)

Zhijuan gave up on standing up, and instead stayed on the floor. Her face inching away from the vomit puddle that was stained red. Her eyes were crossed, and her tongue was lolling out. She looked like a dog on a hot day. Her breathing was heavy and panting.

And then, she went quiet. Her eyes were shut.

(Zhijuan was motionless again.)

(Meditating.)

"Uh-huh..." Shawn huffed as he watched Pinky like a hawk, still keeping a firm grip on his beer bottle just in case the guy tried to pull a fast one.

That said, as Pinkslip was with them when the second scream occurred, that gave his story some credence. It was probably not the whole truth, and he sure as shit wasn't about to let his guard down just yet, but given that he didn't bother to check the kitchen himself he couldn't exactly rule Pinky's story out.

Still, as his mother once told him: Never trust a man with pink hair, you never know what other depravities they're capable of.

Shawn wasn't too keen on the idea of letting Pinky take a closer look at the girl, but he didn't offer any complaint. He did however raise a slight eyebrow at the suggestion of Andrew heading down to investigate the noise with someone, said someone presumably being either Wendy or Shawn himself. Made sense, was the exact kind of thing he'd suggest if he was in his position. All the more reason to remain suspicious.

That did beg the question: Does he offer to go down with Andrew and risk bumping into whatever was causing all this screaming, or stay with Pinko and the girl who was puking blood everywhere? Wendy didn't sound too keen on sticking around, but (annoyingly) nor would she give up on the girl.

He stepped back to take another look, seeing the girl now laying on her side, eyes shut and body motionless. Had she... He tried to not think about it, the thought alone making him gag. If she really was... Gone, then hey, problem solved right? One less competitor to worry about. That... Didn't make him any less uncomfortable about the idea of being in the presence of a... Oh, God.

"Well..." he said, gulping a little. "I think she's a bit of a lost cause at this point..."

Shawn turned back to Mr Pink, his face gone a ghostly shade of pale. "But, if you really wanna see for yourself..." he continued, stepping aside and gesturing to the open doorway. "Be my guest."

"You sure it's a good idea sending him down?" Andrew stood still in the hallway, eyes drifting from Pinky to the door to the stairs and back again. He had a stern face as he kept this going for a bit.

There was no way they could trust this guy to go down there without doing something shady. Whatever was going on down there, it was probably not worth getting involved now with the sounds they'd been hearing. Andrew had more pressing concerns.

Like, what the hell was going on in that room?

Shawn said the other girl was a lost cause. Andrew could hear noises from it, and he could see from the faces of the others that something was going down, and whatever it was, it wasn't pretty.

He moved closer to the room to see. His expression did not change, but there was a sense of disgust. Something that reminded him, if barely, of parties that had gone wrong back home.

It was a grim sight, and it did not help his stomach. Andrew put his hands in his pockets and muttered some curses under his breath.

Andrew didn’t seem to trust Adam. Neither did Shawn, really, and Wendy was too busy trying to decide whether or not she wanted to stay and help the girl or get the fuck out of here. Whatever. If nobody wanted to look downstairs, then fine. Didn’t matter that much to him.

Shawn did seem to trust Adam enough to check up on the maybe-corpse. Maybe he didn’t care enough about her, though his pale expression suggested otherwise.

Adam began to make his way towards the room, but Andrew was a step faster. Though his expression did not change, he turned away just as quickly as he looked, shoving his hands into his pockets and muttering something.

Now Adam was immensely curious, “Seriously, let me look.”

Stepping past Andrew, Adam was immediately hit with the smell of acid and rust. Looking down, he saw a pool of vomit next to a bed, splotches of red mixed in with the bile. No corpse.

Not until he crouched down to look under the bed, and lo, a body was there. He couldn’t quite tell who the girl was in the dark. Dark hair, kinda short…Jessica? No, wait, maybe Zhijuan?

Standing back up, Adam manoeuvred around the vomit pool to get closer to the bed, then reached out with his right foot to poke Jessijuan.

“Hey. Wakey wakey!” he called out to her, then turned to the group waiting in the hall.

“Y’know, if we’re not sure if she’s dead or not, I’m sure this’ll do the trick,” and with that, Adam lightly placed his foot to where he believed her throat was.

The pink haired boy entered the room and crouched to see where Under-The-Bed Girl was. He shouted at her, trying to wake her up. That didn’t work. He then brought his foot to the girl’s throat.

“Wait,” Wendy said, “What are you going to do? Step on her throat!?”

Wendy entered the room, the smell of vomit assaulting her sinuses.

“Maybe we should put her on the bed,” Wendy said, “It just seems sad, letting her lay under there like that.”

Zhijuan didn't even notice that the boy was in the room until he stepped on her throat.

Her fingers found something and she brought it to the man's ankle, slashing him.

"...I stand corrected."

At that point, Shawn bolted.

((Shawn Bellamy continued in Ursa Major Meltdown))

Oh, what the hell.

Pinky wandered into the room and put his foot to her throat as if that was going to help, and naturally, like the fuckin' clown he is, manages to get himself hurt doing that.

And then Shawn ran off like his ass was on fire.

"What the fu- Shawn!" He shouted after the boy as he ran down the hall and out. Wide eyes stared at his exit and back to the room where wild shit was going on.

"Dead, my ass! Fuckin' hell!" He yelled as he stomped into the room as quick as he could and stomped down on the hand. He ground his foot into it and growled out:

"Girl, you should have stayed dead!" Once it was clear she could do no more harm, he released his foot from her, took hold of the back of the boy's sweater, and dragged him out of the room.

When they were back in the hallway again, Andrew sighed and grumbled to himself:

"Damn it. Should have kicked his ass when I had the chance."

He gruffly let go of pinky and went down the hall. There was no point in staying here with all this bullshit. Shawn was going to get it if he caught up to him.

Wendy questioned whether or not Adam really was going to plant his foot on Jessijuan’s throat. Like, no fucking shit? If he felt signs of struggle, signs of life, then he’d take his foot off.

He didn’t feel shit, so his foot remained.

Wendy entered the room, pausing as the smell of vomit hit her like a wall, then suggested moving Jessijuan onto the bed. Adam shrugged, shifting his weight to move his right foot away, “Sure, I guess. We can get a better look–”

A sudden, sharp pain in his ankle cut off his next words. Hissing, he stumbled back half a step.

The fuck did she do?!

“Fucking– Fuck!” Adam yelled, just as Andrew stormed into the room. Adam cleared the way for Andrew, wincing a bit when weight was put onto his right leg. Andrew slammed his foot down onto the hand sticking out of the bed, grinding it into the floor.

Adam's eyes trailed down to what the hand was holding on to. A butterfly knife. Her weapon. Of course.

He turned away from the scene to examine his first battle scar in this God forsaken game. Two thin lines of bright red crossed the front of his ankle, broken up by a bit of jean fabric that refused to break apart. The cut was thin enough that the only bit of exposed skin was the wound itself, and it wasn’t bleeding; two things to be thankful for.

Still, if he was getting wounded this early in the game…

His thoughts were cut off by a pang of fear as he felt the back of his sweater get grabbed and his feet being dragged across the ground.

“Let me go! Fucking hell–” Adam snarled at Andrew. He could walk just fine, thank you very much.

Once in the hallway, Adam noticed a distinctive lack of Shawn. Andrew grumbled something about kicking Shawn’s ass, then let Adam go in a gruff enough manner that Adam needed a moment to regain footing.

“Yeah, so, uh, thanks for saving me back–” but Andrew was already down the stairwell.

“...Asshole,” Adam muttered, then turned to the only remaining occupant on this floor.

“Sorry, Wendy,” Adam smiled in a way to show that he was not at all sorry, “Looks like she’s all yours.”

Now it was his turn to leave this fucking place. He’ll go somewhere else, patch himself up, exaggerate the extent of the cut to anyone who’ll ask about the bandage.

He’s off to a great start.

((Adam Lader continued in I'M GOOD, I'M GOOD, I'M GREAT))

Just as the pink haired boy was about to agree to putting her on the bed, Under-The-Bed Girl slashed at his leg with what looked like a big knife. Wendy cupped her mouth in shock and gasped. During the commotion, Shawn fled, then Andrew came in and dragged Pink-Haired Boy out into the hall. Wendy looked to the hall, then towards the girl, and back at the hall. There was no way she wanted to be left with a hostile student.

“Guys!,” Wendy shouted as she fled out of the room and sown the hall, “Wait for me!”

(Wendy Kennedy, continued elsewhere…)

The surge of life was temporary.