Survival Of The Fittest

"That's the game I was talking about." Alan answered, gesturing to the nearest monitor.

"Everyone in this room--besides you, since you died before then-- has died in some way on the island shown on those monitors. The monitors are so we can watch the progress of the ones still alive."

Toby shook his head.
He couldn't believe it. He was crazy, he thought. Toby had snapped.
There's no way anyone'd do that...and, besides, I can't be dead. I'm breathing.
He grinned a bit at him. "Okay, jokes over. Which of my 'friends' put you up to th---"
From the corner of his eyes, he noticed the monitors again. And a certain 'actor' getting blown away.
He'd never seen anything so graphic. He knew no Hollywood studio would be ballsy enough to do that, either. High school student blown to hell with a shotgun, point blanke?

He shuddered. This was all some hugely elaborate prank...right?

The person was most definitely dead now on the monitor. VERY dead. Unless you can survive with almost no neck. Toby'd never thought he'd get to see something so ...gruesome.

His shaking eyes looked back at Alan.
"...if you're screwing with my head, I swear to god, I'll kill you." His eyes were literally shaking, by the way. Not figuratively. His whole BODY shook.

"You could try, but since we are both already dead, it wouldn't work. Besides, if you don't believe me, ask some of the others. Especially ask how they died." Alan replied, rolling his eyes at Toby.

Toby blinked.
He decided to check something. Namely, his damn PULSE. He reached up, placing two fingers just in the right spot for pulse checking...

His eyes snapped open. He'd always been able to find a bit of one, but now...none. No pulse at all. He yanked his left sleeve back, ripping it slightly, and checked his wrist. Same.

He felt his neck now. The cut.
"...was I...my neck..." His thoughts failed to come in full, structured sentences.

Defeated, he dropped back into his seat. "...my god..." He could have found so much morbid humor, yet had not the strength. Or want.
"So...I guess....my last thoughts were....heh, never thought that would happen..." He didn't say WHAT he meant, but his tone of voice, and the far off look he had taken, heavily implied he was thinking about a person he had wanted to see.
Wonder if she knows...
"Well...shit..." He slumped further in the chair. This was...too much.

"Little shocked, are we?"

The voice, with its slight sarcasm and amused tone, came from Art as he sauntered over and clapped Toby on the back, before stretching his arms a little and looking at his notepad.

"All right, Alan...just want to give you a heads-up, Hawley Faust is in the midst of dying, so you're going to have to choose a new winner. He'll be wandering in soon I'm sure. Of course, you don't HAVE to, but it's more fun, right bro?"

Art then looked back to Toby.

"I guess you're not really sure what's going on, are you...? Well, if you want to head in there..." Art nodded his head at a room that looked like an betting central, like you'd find in most sports bars. "...you can place your bets on who you think's going to die next, how they're going to kick off, who's even left, and who's going to win it all. S'even got profiles and everything, so you can even have a bit of fun even if you don't know what's going on. Name's Art, by the way. I got disemboweled by some crazy psychopath named Cillian. Not exactly the most fun thing in the world, but I guess all's fair, I tried to kill him first, so..."

Art shrugged, and grinned at Toby.

"Damn, that's probably going to mess Adam up something good." Alan said about the news of Hawley's death. Then he got up and headed to the betting area.

"Well, I'll stick with the bet that Adam's group will find a way off, but I'm not sure."

Toby would have choked to death on his drink, hearing them. Had he been drinking.
Which is all terribly ironic and all, him BEING DEAD.

He looked at Art, grinning a bit, just to feel less uneasy. "Um...I'm Toby...I'd say nice to meet you, but..."

He looked at the betting area, and back to Art. "...betting? On...classmates, I assume? That's insane!"

He took a breath, and looked at Art. "You're all crazy. All of you." He shook his head.

...out of curiousity, he looked at the two again. "How'd I die? Any ...dignity, or death in a bathroom or something?" Such a bad thing to joke about, but he had to...the situation was too crazy not to.

Nanami blinked a bit at the newcomer, feeling somewhat less awkward and more relieved that she would not be the only new person here. She thought it strange though, that took a good long while for Toby to register the fact that he was dead. Perhaps he was not fully aware of his fate when it happened...

Probably felt better than the way she felt right before she died, this Nanami thought remorsefully. It wasn't easy, knowing that you were about to die, knowing that you had ruined everything for the one person who cared about you and unable to make it all better again.

She curiously, though shyly, glanced towards Toby, "You weren't part of the game, were you...? I didn't see you on the TV, sorry. It's probably good that you didn't remember the way you died..." She smiled awkwardly, rubbing the back of her head.

"I...got killed by my best friend. Oh, but I tried to kill her first, so it was my fault...yeah..." This she added quickly, looking away in shame.

Suddenly listening to what Art had mentioned, she glanced towards the TV screen quickly, looking for any sign of Madelaine.

As though she had somehow willed it, there was Madelaine, in the midst of a daze. Nearby was one of her newfound friends, lying dead upon the ground. Hawley, was it? One of the redheads...not the loudmouth, though this one was almost as obnoxious...

So...he was another one of Madelaine's friends... Nanami thought to herself, falling silent in contemplation as she read the thoughts of Madelaine that had been made literate, words of desperation and despair.

Nothing I can do now, Nanami thought, sighing remosefully. Except sit here and watch her like the idiot I've been all along.

Toby heard Nanami now, turning his head. He was still in a daze...he really wondered how he died.
"Well...I guess..."
As she talked about how she had died, he blinked.
Talk about a mood killer.
For some reason, the image of her came to mind...but trying to kill someone in this game. "You call it a fucking GAME?" This was more proof how screwed up humanity was...
Anyway. He imagined her...in this game....and as Nanami spoke, he half imagined her trying to kill him.

The vision was enough to make him want to kill himself. Oooh, but he can't. HELL.

Always one to comfort anothers and sacrifice himself, he looked at her kindly. "Well, I'm sure she'd understand....somehow...logic's always sorta wierd like that." He grimaced at his pathetic attempt.
Seriously, he felt like a mixture of shit, and the most confused person on Earth. Heaven. Hell. WHATEVER this was.

"According to them, some transfer killed me...hell. I wonder how..." Curiosity was killing him x.x;


"Miss...what's your name? Guess I should get to know you people...what with us being stuck together now..." He chuckled grimly.

Art laughed out loud at Toby's amazement.

"Yeah, we call it a game. But really, that's what it is. It's a sick, demented game. Let me explain: the majority of kids here are from a high school called Barry Coleson High, and most of us were on a high school end-of-year kind of thing. Like a trip, you know? And basically what happened was we all got kidnapped by this terrorist called Danya...and basically, yeah. He told us that we basically had to kill each other, and whoever survived would be allowed to leave. So basically it's a big fuckin' game of last man standing, dude. We all lost. Danya. Hmph."

Art shook his head with distaste.

"Truthfully, I hope the guy gets what's coming to him when this is all over and done with. If you've listened to Adam Dodd at all during this game - he's the guy on...that monitor there, the redhead wearing the Audioslave t-shirt. If you've listened to Dodd at all, you'll hear him cursing Danya left and right. See that collar he's got on? We all had them, and they have microphones inside of them..."

He trailed off, and sighed.

"...and explosives. So if we wander into certain 'danger zones', we explode. Fun stuff. Danya's one sick fucker, and really...he's not even on the island, so nobody knows if anyone will even be able to make him pay for it all. Kind of a shitty situation, really."

Turning to Nanami, he extended his hand.

"We haven't met. I'm Art. I kind of run the odds game around here, or so it would be. If you want to place any bets on anyone, anything like that, I'm the guy to talk to. I mean, we've got to have something to do, you know?"

Toby looked at Art, finally seeming to have something that sounded normal.
That was gettin' wierd...everyone so proper...clean mouthed...after DYING? Well...

He stood, and stepped out from his seat. He looked at Art again. "So, where's Dodd now?" Toby had a habit of referring to those he didn't know by their last names. Eh, whatever.
"Good odds on him?"
Basically, he's thinking, Fuck it, I'm dead, I should make the best of it.
@@

"That Danya guy sounds like one sick little fuck. Almost happy I never saw him..."


[in simpler words, can I get a link to where Dodd started so I can trace his footsteps? Or, at least, a link to where he is now?
...wait, was it Dodd who had the morphine high, or someone else? XD]

“Adam’s got decent enough odds on him, he’s proven himself to be right tough.” Edward mused from where he sat along the end of the pool table, where he had been sitting since he had watched Garret be killed some time later. “After all he’s been trough, said, and done… I think he’ll manage to do something to turn the game around. Course I thought the same thing about Faust…”

Edward trailed off a little at this point, till yet another voice spoke up. “Of course Adam isn’t all words as most make him out to be.” This was coming from the form of Blaine Eno who sat not to far behind where Edward currently rested. “Out there I wasn’t quite the sanest of people, and attacked his girlfriend and another girl in his group. Ended up getting my throat blown out with a shotgun by him.”

Smiling a little, Edward glanced back up toward the TV again looking over the images flashing on screen as a hand reached up to rub along his ear. “Yeah, if anyone now, I think Adam’s got the best chance of getting off that island. Getting off and get that guy back for all that’s happened… course as long as Adam’s emotions don’t get in the way before then and now… he’s quite the emotion one I must say.”

Though, while all this was going on inside, outside our little bar-of-the-living-dead, Hawley stood looking over the building’s structure. Pondering silently to himself, what he was looking at completely… personally he figured something a lot less of a bar you’d find in some woods away from anyplace else.

Processing these thoughts he found himself raising his hand to rub his neck as he had done so many times in life, though now he was surprised by a few things. The first thing, more happy than surprised was that the collar that he had grown so used to was no longer there along with that filmier feeling of the scar that had been there.

No metallic taste of blood in his mouth, no pain, everything seemed fine and he himself seemed fine. Lifting a hand he found himself rubbing his head now as he looked over the building once again. Standing out here wouldn’t do him any good, not like he could hitchhike himself to somewhere else when you don’t even now where you are to start with.

Breathing in, he moved forward pushing against the door and opening it to a rather warm environment populated by a bunch of people, he knew very well, to be dead. Though of course, he was dead himself… but that isn’t the point. The point was that he found himself surrounded by a lot of his dead classmates, and some people he didn’t even know at all.

Andrew Lipson couldn't help but agree heartily with the conversation that had began to begin about Dodd near the pool tables. Striding over, thinking for the unpteenth time that he was glad to be rid of that cursed wheelchair, Andrew looked at everyone, nodding to Toby, as he hadn't spoken with him yet.

"Yeah, Dodd's a fighter all right. I've known the guy since...well, since like forever, so I'm hoping that he fucks up Danya well and good. He's been lucky up until now, hasn't been hurt too much, you know? Well, actually, you gave him a nice little slice, but..."

He winked at Blaine, and continued.

"...I think the only wild-card at the moment will be Amanda. If she dies, I don't know if he's going to be able to stick around. Then again, I don't know if he can escape if she's still around. As sick as it is, and don't get me wrong, she's a strong girl, the best chance anyone's got for escape is to be by themselves. If Dodd committs himself to seeing everyone get out alive, I have a bad feeling he's going to be in for a really rude awakening."

Sensing a new arrival out of the corner of his eye, he swivelled his head and grinned a little.

"What'cha think, eh Faust?"

Nanami laughed in reply to Toby's comment, remarking, "Yes, we're pretty much stuck with one another for who knows how long." She smiled a bit, before realizing what had happened. She was smiling, and even laughing to boot, despite all that was happening to her. All that HAD happened to her, rather. She realized then that she hadn't smiled like this since...

...well, perhaps never.

Dead people smile, and then they laugh, Nanami thought to herself with morbid humour.

She looked towards Toby for a moment, and then towards Art, who was extending his hand towards her. She accepted it timidly, addressing them both. "It's Nanami... nice to meet you, I was from a different school."

It was odder still, having a completely normal conversation right after dying...

She fell silent for a moment, listening to the others making discussion as to who might make it out alive. Whatever thoughts Nanami had on the matter, she kept it to herself. After all, she barely had time to get to know anybody on the island, for obvious reasons.

Her attention was caught by yet another newcomer to the bar, and she instantly recognized him as one of Madelaine's little group, the one who had only recently just fallen.

Immediately, she looked away to avoid notice, though in her mind, she was deliberating. Though she wanted to talk to someone...anyone, about Madelaine, she realized what sort of impression she had imposed upon the group. None of them would have any respect for her now.

Hawley’s attention drifted back down to the people closet to where he stood when he heard his name be mentioned, he glancing about once more before shrugging. “Quite an odd little place to end up… I expected gates… or something, not a bar with a bunch of my dead classmates in it.”

Blowing a strand of hair out of his face, he moved toward where everyone seemed to be standing glancing over the faces, the one that had spoken to him just a moment before was no doubt Andrew. Who Adam had wanted to find after making contact with him… only in the end to find him dead.

Everyone who he remembered hearing be announced on those reports was here… raising a hand he gave what could be considered a wave toward Alan. “Long time no see, huh?” He muttered, before glancing off again. “So what… this is our afterlife, sit about shooting pool, and drinking… all the while watching what becomes of those left on the island.”