Serendipity

[Rocky*]

((Reiko Ishida continued from Reflection))

The problem with having no real goal in mind when travelling is that, since you don't have a target location, you tend to wander aimlessly and pointlessly. Reiko Ishida was finding this to be something of a problem. It seemed she was no closer to finding shelter than she'd been a few hours ago when she'd embarked on this trip. She knew she wanted to find something, probably a house of some sort, but given that she still didn't really know the locations, despite being stranded on the island for over a week, navigating was turning into an issue.

Of course, being lost, or more accurately not having a specific destination, can sometimes prove to be beneficial for the traveller. After all, they say it's not the destination that matters. It's the journey. Reiko's journey had taken her to many places, both physically and mentally. From her first kill to hearing about her sister's death to watching as her girlfriend was dragged away to be rescued... Things had been... something, so far, to sum up the experience with an understatement. Her journey wasn't over yet though, and at that particular moment in this traveller's path lay a small stroke of luck.

Not that the bodies lying ahead were really indicative of 'luck'. Reiko had seen corpses before. Hell, she was the reason for a few too many of them. So it wasn't the dead bodies in particular that caught the small girl's attention. Two of them laid dead, one male and one female. Probably recently deceased, given that they, thankfully, weren't as decayed as some she'd seen. But again, it wasn't the bodies that she really cared about. Rather, it was a few of their obvious possessions that caused Reiko to stop.

Taking her bag off her shoulder, Reiko placed it on the ground before moving her way to the female corpse. Upon closer inspection she was able to identify her as Alice Boucher, a girl who she'd occasionally run into at school. Not that that meant much. There was part of her that gave a slight twinge of anxiety, as if looting their bodies was wrong, but how did that kind of morality count for anything any more? A dead girl had no use for her weapons. It took a little time and quite a bit of struggling with straps and dead weight, but after a few minutes Reiko found herself in possession of a pair of new weapons.

Sitting down next to her bag, Reiko took a moment to catch her breath. She was starting to get slightly out of shape by her standards, what with the lack of real nutrition or warm shelter. Unzipping her bag, the slightly embattered girl found herself in a bit of a conundrum. There was no way the two new guns were going to fit into her bag with the others. Sure, the pistol she could keep tucked into her belt, and she was probably going to do that, now that she thought of it, but the larger gun, one that she was able to identify as an MP40, thanks to Sarah forcing her to play Battlefield with her, was going to cause some issues with its size. Especially with the already substantially large sniper rifle occupying her bag.

It really didn't take that much deliberation for her. She was kind of reluctant to let go of the rifle, since it originally belonged to Sarah, but in the end it was kind of a bad thing to remember someone by. Reiko pulled the sniper rifle out of her bag, laying it across her lap. After a few moments of fiddling with it, the girl found the magazine release, popping the ammo out of the rifle with a clack. She mightn't have any use for it, but that didn't mean she was going to leave the thing just laying around fully loaded. Tucking the magazine back into her bag, she then took the MP40 and placed it where the rifle had been. She didn't know the make of the pistol she now checked and tucked into her belt, but it hardly mattered, so long as it worked.

It was around then that Reiko heard the familiar whine of the island's speakers. Announcement time again. Reiko listened attentively as usual, hearing that Kris was dead brought a weak smirk to her face, more out of relief than joy, as much as she felt some disappointment that she hadn't been able to bring revenge to bear on her sister's killer herself. She heard her name come and go as yet another mark was added beside it. Samya's name came immediately after. She hadn't really known her, but she'd seemed nice enough when they'd met at the cliffs, and her death felt unfortunate. The rest of the names mostly passed over her without much thought, whether killer or victim, all they really were in her mind now were names. All the people she cared about were dead or gone.

It took a while, but the part that Reiko really needed to pay attention to came next. As the danger zones were listed off, she took note of them in her head. Especially the fact she was almost definitely currently in one. They'd said to go north to avoid the new ones, so at least now she had a direction. If not a destination. Pulling out the barely touched compass from her bag and zipping it up, Reiko picked up her things, looked at the little red needle on her compass, and began to walk north.

((Reiko Ishida continued in Camping Out))