Survival Of The Fittest

She forced herself to look, even though every single fiber of her being was telling her to avert her eyes.

Lili knew that if she wasn't able to get used to the sight of dead bodies, she wouldn't last very much longer on Spiderland.

[Lili Williams continued from Breadcrumb Trail.]

It helped that she hadn't come across one of her friends. That she had barely known Jasmine King, if at all. Sure, she played in a few ensembles at school, piano and violin, but her playing wasn't anything special. If Lili started to mourn every instrumentalist she had ever known who had died, she knew she'd lose it. Besides, Jasmine was stuck up, angry, and nobody worth crying over. Not like Jane, whose death she had spent a good half hour denying when she heard it over the speaker, or Sandy, who she had expected to last longer.

Lili was glad that certain people were alive, and angry that certain people weren't, but at the risk of jinxing anything, she kept her thoughts to herself. They were bottled up on a nice shelf in the warehouse of her mind, tucked behind boxes of childhood memories and awkward conversations. There, it'd stay hidden. For good. Hopefully. Was the lack of cigarettes what was getting to her? She couldn't tell. The sharp pain she had felt earlier in her forehead disappeared after she had gone to sleep (a dreamless, peaceful rest spent floating in a sea of darkness, thankfully) for the night, giving way to a dull throb in the back of her skull. When she got off the island, Lili decided that she'd quit smoking for good.

Still, if someone offered her a smoke now, she wouldn't think twice about taking them up on it.

After meditating for a good half hour or so, Lili got up off of the table she was sitting on and walked over to the center of the room, spending some more time desensitizing herself to Jasmine's corpse. The blood had stopped flowing long ago, all pooled out in dried splatters around her instead, and rigor mortis set in long before she had walked in the room. It seemed to be working, her staring at it; Jasmine started to look less and less like a dead person and more and more like a dead animal, or insect, crushed like a bug into the ground, trampled underfoot without a second thought. This wasn't entirely right, of course; Jasmine had killed herself, after all. It wasn't like pigs pressed the nail guns to their own heads at the slaughter house, and cicadas never clipped their own wings or flew under the boots of passerby anyway. She didn't live in a world where weasels ran into oncoming traffic with the intention to kill themselves. Only humans killed other humans, and only humans killed themselves.

She realized that Spiderland was a testament to what makes a human truly human, and the thought sent shivers down her spine.

"You're gross," Lili decided, looking straight into Jasmine's cold eyes for one last time, "G-R-O-S-S. Not gonna end up like you, no way, no how, no sirree, I got people on my feet and I got a head full of blood and brains and it's not goin' to waste just yet." Then, she averted her eyes. Despite her disapproval with Jasmine's... decision, she decided that she at least deserved a little respect. Instead, she looked over the poster covered walls for a while before the words started to mesh together and the dull colors started to drip.

If I'm not careful, boredom will kill me before anything else does.

Lili didn't at all feel like leaving the room, so she walked over to the suitcases piled up in a corner of the room and started to sort through them, checking for anything left behind. She decided to start at the top, so she could work her way down.

"Nothing in this one, uwaaa!" She cried, tossing the first aside. It clattered into a chair, bouncing off and laying open on the floor. She wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, looking at a camera in the corner of the room. Smile, Lili, you're on television.

"D'awww, this one's a blank too," Lili mused, whistling, putting the case on the ground and kicking it across the room. Am I taking this too lightly? Nah, it's more fun this way. Keeps my mind going.

She had gotten through five cases in total when she took a break to stare at the glass chandelier hanging above the room and wonder how hard she'd have to throw a suitcase to get it to come crashing down, her hands on her hips.

((Darius Van Dyke continued from Return of the Manatee))

Asylum. That's where that Brendanboy had gone. To kill, perhaps. That murderous bastard. He heard his name, yes. He could recall that even though Kimiko's fucked up kill overshadowed everything else.

As much he hated this building, he had to go back into it to find his allies. Maybe this was the place, where he could regroup with Jonathan, if he also thought about going here. After all, Brendan told them to go to the Asylum.

But there was no Jonathan to find. Fuck.

Creepy like the building was, he went through the corridor into a room.

On the floor, there was a person lying. Sleeping. Not. Standing at the corner, was a chinese girl. Lili.

Did he know her well? No. She was one of the girls he did not do much with. Perhaps just a nerdy, outsider girl. She looked like one. She was an underclass girl as well. But, didn't he smoke with her once? He could not recall. He smoked with a lot of people. If he smoked with her and he lent her a cig, that would be good. Cause then she has to give cigs to him, now. That would be swell.

She was looking.

Up. So did Darius. As if there was a cat in the ceiling. Or a spider crawling out of the chandelier. But apparently there was nothing.

"Sup?"

Darius had to be cautious on this island around asian people with batons.

"You friendly?"

The glittering of the chandelier dug at the corners of Lili's vision. Though her glasses had been smudged and scratched before, the past two days had taken their toll on her vision more than anything else she had been through before. She was considering doing away with them entirely when she looked at the chandelier, its reflective surface making the imperfections in the lenses even worse.

Then, the door opened, and her focus was broken.

Darius.

He looked familiar. Was he someone she knew? Lili drew a blank at first, but as her head throbbed, aching for another smoke, she began to remember faintly having been with him at some point before. Her cravings returned, and her head began to hurt even more as her fingers curled into her hand as a fist. Darius was asking if she was...friendly? She hadn't heard his name in either of the announcements, as far as she could tell, so she guessed that she was fine with his presence.

"As friendly as you are," She said, as she took her glasses off her face. The world became clearer all at once, even if the things scattered around the room became blurrier the further away they were. Darius' face looked mushier, the most striking thing about him from this distance being the green in his hair. The posters on the wall stopped making what little sense they had made, but Lili turned her eyes away from them as she put her glasses in her pocket. She could almost smell the smoke on her nostrils, coming from him.

She sniffed at the air, and remembered that the two of them were far from alone.

"Oh, I didn't do this," Lili noted offhandedly, her head turning towards the girl's corpse, "She's been like this since before I got here. Dead. Did you know her?"

Her shoulders were beginning to shiver, and she rubbed her arms, feeling the warmth of her sweater on her skin.

"You don't play? Fuck yeah! Congrats for not being a moron."

Darius approached her and reached out for a high five. Lili was not on the announcements, but literally every other idiot was. It was good to see someone he could trust. And someone who talked normally to him. She apparently also trusted him. Her behaviour was non-suspicious. Normal. Cool-headed. She was not an emotional trainwreck like Jonathan. Or a fucking aggressive person like Junko or Samuel...he also died or was killed in the announcements, right? l2p, noob...it wouldn't surprise Darius if one doesn't stay alive long with threatening people with crossbows. Darius was not happy that he died, but at this point he did give less fucks about the lives of people who threatened to kill him.

He looked at the body Lili pointed at. He recognised the face and recognised that he did not recognise her.

"Known her? Nah. And now it's too late to do that, hehe."

Darius chuckled. It was too late. Shit happens. Don't have time to get known to all the dead underclassmen. Shrug. He stared at the corpse. Had he ever seen a corpse before? No. That was the first corpse he experienced live. And he could smell it. Ew. Jasmine looked very much like a corpse with her black metal collar and her wounds and her deadness.

But, she still had the collar?

It was still there, even though she is dead. Why? Was it still working? How did it even work? You enter a danger zone and it goes boom. Probably controlled with something. Controlled by the people watching them on their cams. Now, what was going on with Jasmine's collar? Was it deactivated because she is dead? Or was it still high explosive? Is there a difference in collar mechanics whether the person that is wearing them is dead or alive?

The collars were probably kept on the body as long as the person lives and beyond. Did the winners also come out with a collar still attached? Is it even removable? Bullshit. Everything is removable. Especially once you're out of here.

He crawled his goatee. Staring at the dead body.

"Hey. Wanna help me moving her?"

Lili blinked when Darius raised his hand, then felt relief wash over her when she realized that he was reaching out to her. She returned his high five, the hearty slap-sound of their hands hitting each other resounding through the hall. Everyone else she had met had been acting strange, and not in a good way, even her friends and people she knew. She was glad that, at the very least, there was someone who wasn't going to give in to the world around him like they had. The rules of Spiderland were not binding after all.

"Yeah, me neither," Lili responded, as Darius chuckled. She felt the need to giggle as well, and grinned as she shook her head, her lips sealing the impulse within. In any other case, she'd have thought his lighthearted nature to be unnerving, especially given the circumstances. She knew, though, that as someone who was trying to through suitcases at a chandelier just minutes before for the sake of entertainment, she had very little room to judge him. Maybe we'll get along alright, she thought, I'm taller than him. I'm not taller than many people at all, but I'm taller than him, and that's gotta mean something, I bet.

But would she help him move Jasmine?

"G-R-O-S-S." A word she remembered spelling, allowed, and a word that still represented how she felt about...

Well, y'see...

The prospect of moving a corpse didn't sound nice to her, but it was really starting to stink up the place.

"Nah," She said, walking over to the body, "I'm just gonna watch you drag it out of here." Lili smiled again, lifting Jasmine up by her left arm. Looking back up at him, she hoped that he'd know she was kidding. He seemed like the kind of person that could appreciate some sarcasm, even Lili's own shitty attempts at the ancient craft. "You can get the other side," Lili chirped, "And we can put her outside the door, to scare people away, or somethin'."

Darius smirked when Lili used sarcasm. She had a good sense of humor. Unlike Danya. So, he grabbed the other side and began to drag the corpse. There was a difference between touching a person alive and a corpse. Jasmine felt so fucking disgusting to touch. He couldn't tell if that was also the case before she died, though.

"Oh, I had a different idea where to put her. Corpses won't scare killers running around, I'm certain about that. After all, an Isabel or a Kimiko won't stand in front of the door and say 'oh shit I'm too afraid to enter, there's a corpse lying in front of the door. I'll turn around and leave the people inside alone'."

Another chuckle.

No, Jasmine had to be transported elsewhere. Back to the radio tower. He had a theory. They dump her into the danger zone and see what happens. Will her collar explode? If it won't explode it's a sign that it has been deactivated. And then two options would remain. Either the terrorists deactivate them manually when they see someone getting killed or they get automatically deactivated once someone is dead. It would not surprise him if these collars could measure the pulse or anything. Or if they could hear the breaths of a person. After all, since it is streamed on the internet there have to be mics somewhere around them, no?

"Might be a long way we need to carry her, though."

It was a good idea to not tell her where he wanted to drag her. A) She wouldn't have a reason to say 'no, that's dumb, I won't help you' and B) She probably won't ask further. Hopefully. That would be bad, because he had to keep the things for himself so it actually can work.

Also Darius would hate dragging her the whole bridge alone. He wasn't paid for this shit.

"A long way, huh?" Lili said, looking down at Jasmine. Her head looked like it was going to come off of its hinges, the cut in her throat opening like a second mouth gasping for air. Her body felt stiff, like it was made out of bean bags stuffed to the brim with their filling. She was downright rigid.

The living half of the two girls thought that Darius was acting somewhat strange. He wasn't telling Lili anything about what plans he had, which gave her some pause. What if he was going to try and tire her out by carrying the body, then finish her off while she was catching her breath? There were quicker ways to kill somebody, but with what she had heard on the announcements, it didn't seem too far out there as far as plots went. Even if that wasn't his goal, what would people think if they saw the two of them carrying a dead girl in broad daylight? What if someone like Asuka or Georgia Lee saw them and jumped to the wrong conclusions?

"Now give me a bar and a penny. If you gimme a rusty dime I will throw it at you."

The boy named Alan hadn't cared at all about what Lili would think when he offered her a trade that would only benefit her. He came up, spouting some crap about a rebel alliance, and then was done. That was the end of his story, to her. If she took that approach to life in Spiderland - carefree, spontaneous, amicable - then maybe she'd get to truly live.

And besides, she still had the light-saber clipped to her waist.

"Maybe you could tell me where we're going, first?"

Lili let go of Jasmine and walked over to where her bag was, throwing her nightstick inside before she zipped it up and slung it across her back. Then, she walked back over and picked up her share of the weight once more.

"Not because I'm gonna desert you if you wanna go to, like, the beach, I'm just curious 'is all."

Damn it, she wanted to ask more. Quick, think of a reply.

"Radio Tower, my group's headquarter. I know it's currently a danger zone, but we can move her near the Radio Tower already."

Darius was extremely happy when Lili took her things to come with him.

"So...and once the Radio Tower is clean again, we can work on the corpse with the tools inside. Tomorrow, hopefully."

Yeah, that was plausible for both Lili and the terrorists listening.

"Speaking of my crew, do you want to join us? If you dare, I have to add. We're dangerous and we are in danger. Look, the Radio Tower was declared a danger zone because of us. Cause we are a threat to the game."

He smirked and winked. He of course doubted that they declared it a dangerzone because of them, but it hopefully made his "group" sound more inviting and appealing to her. Or like, his duo with Jonathan.

A group? This was getting interesting. Hadn't Alan talked about starting some kind of rebellion? Maybe they were one and the same.

Maybe she'd find some people she knew.

But she'd been to the radio tower before, and the only person she had found there was Lily. Granted, there had been a lot of time in between then and now, but she wondered if it was alright to let him know she'd been in there.

Her mind wandered to the shoes on her feet, and the promise she had made in the morning of mourning the day before.

Further back, she thought of the friend she had left behind, and it settled within her the terror he might have felt when he found that she was gone.

"Sounds swell," Lili said, nodding her head, "I don't mind goin' that far."

"Lead the way."

Nice.

"The radio tower is a nice place. Perhaps we'll see Jonathan on the way."

So the three of them moved away from the Asylum. To their freedom.

It was still hard work to carry Jasmine, though.

((Darius Van Dyke continued in God in Three Persons))

A nice place. Not what Lili remembered of it, but it was going to be okay, right?

Of course it would.

After all, she had just made a friend.

[Lili Williams goes walking with God in Three Persons.]