Page 1 of 5
All That I've Ever Known
Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:14 am
by laZardo*
((Premiere B140))
This wasn't how the trip was supposed to go. This had to be a sick prank. The gassing on the bus, waking up in some kind of auditorium, watching webcam-quality films of kids killing each other while huddled up on a seat like that weirdo detective those anime fangirls idolized.
The first thing Cisco Vasquez definitely heard when he was sure he wasn't dreaming was the sound of beeping. He could immediately feel that he was resting facing up on something old and wooden, and very likely splintery if he moved.
He couldn't, and the next thing he sensed - complete darkness - brought him that most dreaded of realizations, immediately causing him to hyperventilate which wasn't such a good idea with the sensation of something wrapping very tightly around his neck to choke off his windpipe.
Wherever he was, he was trapped. That he found out when he started to bang against the inner walls of his confines. Or tried to, he hit something as he 'raised' his arms to do so only to bang them against the walls already. And to make things delightfully worse, these accomodations were extremely claustrophobic, and he couldn't immediately tell which side was "up".
That and the beeping suddenly started growing more rapid.
This practically amplified Cisco Vasquez's screams as he pulled his arms up and started to bang against the wall in 'front' of him. This had to be a sick prank. It had to be.
Cisco didn't scream, but rather gasped as he let one final strike at his coffin as the rapid beeps unified into one long, high-pitched squeal.
There was a thud as his fists hit the wood, but he felt it in his neck. Immediately three out of his senses shut off.
Then there was a flash of light. Silence...then a voice.
"Why would I kill you in a locked closet? That's a stupid idea."
And then, there was only sky.
B140 - VASQUEZ, F - Alive
Indeed, that was the first thing Cisco Vasquez saw when his consciousness actually returned to reality, at least for the first split second. An almost blinding gold punctuated with the occasional dark-gray threads of a cloud marking the sunrise. His sense of speech returned in the form of his scream fading back in, almost as if resuming from earlier.
He could immediately feel something coarse and metal run down the back of his head, along his back and down his legs as he woke up. It quickly occurred to him that he was still lying down, and in his barely-dreaming state of mind, very likely on a metal raft where they piled the bodies for removal.
This was incorrect, upon quicker inspection - sitting up even quicker than that out of waking reflex - he found himself on the bed of a truck, somewhere out in a forest judging from the trees he could spot beyond the walls of that flatbed. There were buildings nearby.
More important was a fairly large, khaki object just to his left, resting against the truck bed wall. Instinctively moving to find out exactly what that object was did nothing to calm his nerves as the pieces started falling into place in reality.
The characters 'B-140' had been hastily stencil-painted onto the duffel bag in white. He unstrapped it and peered inside. Everything that had been mentioned in the auditorium was there. A first-aid kit. Rations. In a little waterproof bag, a map and compass. A bright-red plastic Eveready flashlight.
And a cheap karaoke songbook. He would have been perplexed as to the nature of what a karaoke songbook of children's songs was doing in his daypack until a brightly-colored object caught his eye from under the bag itself.
Resting flatly under bag B-140 until he lifted it off, clearly too big to fit into the actual sack, was a vinyl record of "Carol Channing Sings Children's Songs." The almost-insanely happy face of the singer was pasted on the insanely-colored 1960s-era sleeve. Neither of which provided him any solace.
He held the duffel bag close,
almost like a child cradling their stuffed toy close against the monster under the bed.
And for the first few moments after he finally realized that he had been kidnapped and placed in
Survival of the Fittest, he sat on the flatbed and sobbed while catching his breath. The last cold breezes of dawn chilled his exposed legs and midriff, working their way into his spine, causing him to shiver as they settled in with the revelations of the last 30 seconds.
Wherever he was, he was trapped. The space was much more vast than a coffin or closet, which made the threat of danger all the more surprising. There was still something tightly wrapped around his neck, affecting his breathing. Something that could fix that problem permanently with the same dull thud that woke him up.
After years of poking fun at the inevitability of death, it seemed that now the inevitability of death had decided to teach him a lesson by placing him here. And it was a death that would soon come for him in the form of whoever would finally grant him that
gift of sanity.
It was then that he figured that if he was going to receive that gift, he would do well to not be in a panicked state. He picked up the record and, slowly, carefully, disembarked from the flatbed. Whoever had placed him up there had been thoughtful enough to leave the door lowered.
"Where...am I going to find a record player..." he mumbled to himself, wiping a tear from his eye with the arm that wasn't holding the duffel bag and vinyl record close to his chest. Vinyl players had become obsolete even before he was born. Maybe someone that lived in this...
compound... was a DJ in their spare time.
It felt odd, like a sort of "breaking a fourth wall" odd, as he walked toward the nearest building - the workshop - knowing that one's imminent demise meant a proper soundtrack had to be found.
But odd the norm for someone like Cisco Vasquez, and that was the norm by which he would die.
Re: All That I've Ever Known
Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:14 am
by blastinus
(B130 - George Leidman start thread)
When George awoke, he could hear the sounds of birds in the sky. This was odd, but he could deal with it. After all, he just wanted to sleep, and perhaps the sounds would soothe him back into slumber. As his mind cleared itself, he leaned back, felt the hard metal against the back of his head, and sprang up to a sitting position almost immediately.
"Where the...what...?" he said to himself, as his eyes adjusted themselves to the light of morning. He was sitting in the bed of some sort of truck, parked in front of a large building. As he adjusted his legs, he winced in pain, possibly because he was resting his bare legs on wood shavings.
"How did I get here?" he wondered, and decided to observe his local surroundings with his hands. He felt something like fabric right behind him, and as he shoved it towards the front, he realized that it was a tote bag of some kind. The word "daypack," came to mind, and he wondered why he would have called it that.
Then it hit him. Memories of his last waking hours...and Danya.
He had become a contestant on Survival of the Fittest.
Now frantic, he unzipped his daypack and rummaged through it for the weapon that he had been promised. Medical supplies, food, a flashlight, and then something leathery. Pulling out the latter, he realized that it was...a wallet, full of currency that he didn't recognize.
"This can't be it, can it?" he asked to nobody, angry and annoyed. "How in the heck am I supposed to use this?!"
Throwing the useless thing back into his bag, he zipped the bag up and was about to throw it over the side when something at the corner of his vision made him freeze and slide back down. Somebody else was there, in a nearby truck, doing the exact same thing that he had been planning to do. Ducking back into the bed so that he couldn't be seen, he listened for the telltale thump of the person jumping out of the truck before following suit himself.
"Hey! You there!" he said, stumbling to catch up with the other guy, who he now recognized by the color of his hair. Cisco Vazquez, not a bad guy, although he had heard that the guy had a flair for the dramatic. Whatever the case, the guy would probably not be doing much damage with that vinyl record in his hand, and maybe George could pretend to have something better.
Re: All That I've Ever Known
Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:15 am
by Ruggahissy
B 002 Ethan Kent- Start
Ethan's eyes flew open. He didn't have enough time to process anything at all. Not the strange place he had woken up in, not the auditorium, not the death of his teachers, not the game. Nothing. The only thing he felt was an immense panic in his heart. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't see properly; everything was blurred and grainy.
Oh god. I can't breathe. I can't breathe!
He tried in vain to suck in air but it wouldn't happen. He rolled over onto his side and a small plume of dust and particles flew up from his movement.
The dust! Fucking cunt!
A few feet away he noticed something that looked like a bag. He crawled to the bag and ripped it open. Inside he found his back pack. He desperately ripped into it and pulled out an orange inhaler. Sweet relief flooded him as he pushed down on the plunger and air began to pass through his lungs again.
He sat panting for a few seconds. Ethan took his glasses and tried to clean them on the inside of his shirt. They were still dirty but he could see much better now. He looked down at his fingers to see what exactly it was he was lying in. The dust was coarse and consisted of rather large particles.
This isÂ….sawdust?
Now that he wasn't in a state of panic Ethan took the time to remember what had happened in the auditorium.
"Survival of the Fittest", he murmmered.
It seemed unreal. The blurry vision from his dirty glasses even made it seem more like a dream. He looked around at the building he had woken up in. At the corner he saw a camera focused squarely on him. Ethan took he glasses off again, licked them and tried to get them a little cleaner. He squinted up at the camera.
"Sick, fucking bastards."
Re: All That I've Ever Known
Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:15 am
by Sunnybunny
G043: START
Why did everything smell like dust? Feo was so groggy, it was almost silly. She was positive she hadn't gotten blazed in a month, so she wasn't high. Was she dreaming? If so, her sub-something or other was trying to tell her some serious shit because she felt terrible. As if someone had dropped her on her face.
In fact, she was exactly right.
What the fucking hell . . .
She slowly sat up, pushing herself up with her arms. She really couldn't see anything very well at all. Why? After all, this was just her senior camping trip and she just remembered that video and she had to wear those cute-ass boots and she was gonna die really fucking soon. Like in the next few days or so. And shit, she still couldn't fucking see. There were structures, but she couldn't tell what they were for anything. Feo crawled around and felt a big ass bag. She leaned back against it, trying to get her bearings.
The girl shuddered. Fuck, seeing those teachers get ganked was terrible. Did they really think they would escape this shit, though? Her thought process was oddly calm and clear, mostly because it was still so slow. Whatever they had knocked the class out with, Feo had been highly affected by it. But three things were completely obvious to her.
She was in Survival of the Fittest, and some of her class was in fact, extremely fit.
If she didn't a get a decent weapon, she was pretty screwed.
And the last fact was, she still couldn't see a damn thing.
It finally occured to her to check her glasses. She pulled them off her face, studied them harder than she had ever studied anything in class (and heaven knew Algebra didn't matter now anyway) and came to the sick realization that her glasses were scratched, and badly at that.
"Por que mim?", she muttered. There wasn't any point in looking for her weapon until she'd put in her contacts. And she'd need someone's help for that. In Survival of the Fittest. She had actually heard someone, but she wasn't in any hurry to die.
She figured that would come soon enough.
Re: All That I've Ever Known
Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:15 am
by laZardo*
"Hey! You there!" came a voice from directly behind Cisco, causing him to flinch and freeze in his spot, hunched over a bit from the trauma. The aftermath of waking up from the nightmare had still rendered his spinal column highly sensitive, though his hearing hadn't caught up that he didn't hear someone climbing out of the truck bed next to his before he crawled out.
To Cisco it seemed like the act of turning around took a whole minute, the thought process that eventually deduced he should turn around and see rather than run outright taking twice as long.
And he didn't even turn the full 180 degrees, just enough so he could turn his head to face whoever was about to bring him his sanity.
He didn't notice his eyes had been reddened by his fear and self-loathing, something that would probably incense those that didn't know him from his drama streak. The worst bit about that was not only was he unable to think up a reply immediately, he probably wouldn't be able convince anyone with that look that he was in one of those moments when he wasn't expanding said drama streak.
"Oh...it's...it's you..." he whimpered, shivering as the chilly morning breezes continued to chill his exposed midriff.
He didn't know whether to be relieved at the presence of George Leidman. On the one hand, he knew the guy as nice, a bit absent-minded, and at one point even thought of doing some kind of twisted tango with him for a school dance, even figuring George would say yes if asked, awkward as the result would have been. On the other, those were the type of personalities that tended to be dropped like a hot potato in a situation like this or used to lure people to rather gruesome demises.
For all that couldn't be figured out about what went on in Cisco Vasquez's head, nobody could be uncertain that he at least knew how this game was played.
Which left the next words out of his mouth not the most tactful to add in immediate retrospect.
"Are...are you going to kill me?" he said, with a soft smile that almost would have implied it was a fate he welcomed did it not look suddenly quite psycho (and/or utterly pathetic, depending on interpretation) with his reddened eyes.
Re: All That I've Ever Known
Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:15 am
by Sean*
((B124, Joe Rios, start.))
Joe woke up in a rather uncomfortable position, splayed out on the ground as if someone had haphazardly thrown him there. Considering what had just happened on the bus, that was most likely what happened.
God damn it all to hell. This isn't very good, Joe thought to himself, understating things just a tad.
He looked around in an attempt to process his surroundings. He was at a sawmill; other kids were waking up nearby. A couple of them were already talking to each other. He wasn't sure specifically where the sawmill was, but he knew it was on an island; Survival of the Fittest was always on an island. He never really watched the show, as gore wasn't exactly his thing (particularly not real gore), but he knew how it worked. Kill or be killed.
In addition, he had a daypack next to him. A very strange looking (and large) daypack.
At least I can trust Rose... wait. Joe, previously deep in thought, opened his eyes wide. Where the fuck is Rose? Joe, previously serene (if a bit shocked), became worried. However, he calmed down somewhat quickly.
I'll look for her after I get things sorted out here. Let's see what's in this daypack, Joe pondered in his head as he opened the large bag. In it he found rations, a flashlight, a first aid kit, a handbook apparently written by Danya himself, a map, a compass, his travel bag, and...
"Is that a fucking scythe? Seriously?" Joe muttered to himself.
He unzipped his travel bag and started rummaging around in it to see if anything was missing.
"Clothes? Check. Could probably throw those out, since I'm not gonna have much time to change anywhere, but whatever. Sandwiches? Check, other than the one I ate on the bus before they fucking gassed everyone. Six-pack of Coca-Cola? Check. Not as if it would be any good without a fridge anyways, don't know why I brought that actually. Pocket knife? Not here, unsurprisingly. Saw that coming a mile away; hell, I'm surprised it didn't get taken before I got on the bus. iPod? Oh, hell yes. Thank you, kidnappers. Notebook, pack of pens, both check, not sure why I'd need them anyways," Joe continued muttering. As he finished, he rubbed his shoulder and sighed.
"This is gonna suck," the Latino muttered to himself. He quickly zipped his travel bag up, stuffed the things he had removed back in his daypack, zipped that up, and sat up straight. He stretched his arms upwards and yawned loudly; his gas-induced sleep had not been very restful at all, particularly since a fair portion of it had been spent on his back on rough ground. He then coughed a couple times.
Fucking sawdust. Still not gonna get over the gassing easily. Seriously, these guys must be trying to seem like a Bond villain group or something, Joe thought to himself, as he often did.
"Yeah, this is definitely gonna suck," Joe muttered to himself.
Re: All That I've Ever Known
Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:15 am
by blastinus
"Are...are you going to kill me?"
In response to Cisco's rather meek question, George sputtered, "What? No, no. Not at all! Why would I?" In all honesty, he had been worried about the exact same thing, and hearing the guy ask something like that in such a strange tone made George immediately empathize with the guy. Fishing out the wallet from his daypack, he gave a nervous laugh and added on, "Yeah, dangerous wallet. Fear it." Shrugging, he put the worthless thing back. "That's it, man. I am weapon-free. You could say that we're in the same boat." For emphasis, he waved his hand at the vinyl record.
George knew Cisco Vazquez quite well, because he was an athlete like him. Well, that and it was hard to miss the green hair. He figured that the guy was fairly reliable, and he didn't have anything to fear from him, besides his highly impressive build.
"So yeah...Survival of the Fittest. I never figured this would happen, but it has. What are you going to do, Cisco? You want to work together for now, or are you good on your own?" George was uncomfortably aware that he was babbling, but he had a whole lot of stuff on his mind, and it was good to let it all out at once. Besides, it was dangerous to be alone at a time like this, and he would probably be bothered for the entire time he was here if he just left Cisco to his own devices.
Re: All That I've Ever Known
Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:15 am
by Ruggahissy
Now that he wasn't focusing all of his energy on trying to breathe, Ethan dug back into his backpack. From the pocket he took out his glasses case and used the special cloth inside to further clean his lenses.
Ethan stood and tried to get the sawdust off of his clothes without bringing on another fit. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked around. A sawmill. What an odd place to wind up. He walked around the cutting area, looking at what was once a place where people came everyday for work. It looked like those days were long past. If he had had more time he would have liked to take a look around the mill. Ethan was always interested in the mechanics of things. It was unfortunate that there was nothing left behind, tools and the like, that could have been useful.
A little ways away Ethan spotted another body. He crouched behind a table and quickly started rifling around to find the weapon he'd been assigned. After a few moments of looking all he found was a pair of binoculars.
Are they serious?
He put them back in the bag and looked at the person again. It seemed to be a girl, and she seemed to have woken up. Not just a girl, a pretty girl.
I can take my chances, he thought with a smirk.
He walked up behind her and noticed she was looking at her glasses.
"Would you like some help?" he asked, holding out the cleaning cloth and wearing his best try at a kind smile.
Re: All That I've Ever Known
Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:15 am
by Super Llama*
[[Super B96 Time]]
Step 1: Hold book so that the spine is facing the left.
Step 2: Take the cover of the book, move it up and over to the left and read the contents of the page
Step 3: Repeat with topmost page, until you reach the end of the book. Be sure to read the backside of each page as well
Step 4: Lift the back cover and turn it to the left to close the book.
"Ha ha, very funny." Duncan McMahon said as he read the 'manual' (really just a piece of paper with some writing on it in pencil) for how to use his weapon: a self-help book. He tossed the piece of paper aside, just like he had tossed the book soon after finding it. He very much doubted that "16 Steps To A Better You" would help him here.
He had woken up just a little while ago, and had already gotten the intial disbelief and freak-out and "OH GOD I'M ON AN ISLAND" out of his system. Now it was time to figure out what the hell he was going to do, and try not to get shot. At least, not so soon, anyway. Ever since the cruel reality set in, he had this feeling in the back of his mind that he was complete screwed. He wasn't exactly SOTF winner material, and his shitty excuse for a weapon only cinched the deal.
As he approached the sawmill, he begin to hear voices, and quickly ducked behind a building, listening to see if it was safe. He didn't hear any hostilities, so after a moment he decided to try his luck, stepping out from behind the building, but only just enough so that he could jump back behind it if shit went down.
"Uh...I don't suppose you'd mind one more, would you?"
Re: All That I've Ever Known
Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:15 am
by Sunnybunny
I've still got it. Half-blind and damn near useless, I've still got it.
Thankfully, it didn't occur to Feo that Ethan was just being a decent human being. Her ego being recovered did wonders for her mind-set. She had been dressed wrong for camping, seeing as she was planning on having . . . other activities. Was she dressed for success now? She chuckled at that.
"Actually, yeah, I could use a hand. I guess being a terrorist involves screwing with personal property, so if you could look in my bag and grab my contacts, I would love you for life. Which might not be so long, but hey. They're in the pocket of my yoga pants." Was this guy seriously planning on helping her? Maybe she'd lucked up and met a genuine nice person.
If so, she gave him maybe two days. This place just wasn't for nice people. Sucked, really.
"Uh...I don't suppose you'd mind one more, would you?"
Oh great, someone else to worry about. On the bright side the voice sounded faint, so they weren't that close to her. She didn't need everyone on the damn island knowing she was as good as blind. She didn't feel comfortable here, but what could she do?
Wait for this guy to help me or kill me, that's what I can do.
This was completely ridiculous. But she was not planning on dying in a dustfarm, that's what she did know. She was no easy out.
Re: All That I've Ever Known
Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:15 am
by laZardo*
"What? No, no. Not at all! Why would I?"
"Oh...that's..." Cisco let out a sickly chuckle, "...a bit disappointing." He turned away from George for a moment. Others wouldn't have found that choice of words the best things to say, though to a few opportunists it might have been the words to hear. When he turned back he noticed that George had brought out a wallet...after gasping for noticing that George had suddenly brandished something at him.
"Yeah, dangerous wallet. Fear it," he almost seemed to taunt. "That's it, man. I am weapon-free. You could say that we're in the same boat."
George pointed at the vinyl record that Cisco had probably already snapped in half given that he still pressed it against his chest with his duffel bag. Obviously, George wanted to show that right now he was about as big a threat to Cisco right now as Cisco was to George.
Cisco bit his lip, trying to find something to say. Because he didn't want to say that he didn't trust that the wallet that George didn't pull out was his own. And even if that did turn out to be his own, what wasn't to say George couldn't lure the smaller boy down to some dark, smelly area, and have his way with him and/or kill him just to take the extra supplies off his hands? What, other than what sounded like people inside the logging compound building he was heading for, was stopping George from doing those things right now, in this abandoned parking lot?
But Cisco was mainly now aware, for the first time since he'd screamed his way into consciousness, that his heart was thumping against his ribcage faster than most of the kicks he'd had to catch as the team's former star goalie.
He was also suddenly made aware that George had found something more to say before he could.
"So yeah...Survival of the Fittest. I never figured this would happen, but it has. What are you going to do, Cisco? You want to work together for now, or are you good on your own?"
"Just...just..." Cisco raised his free hand in a half-hearted gesture to stop George, practically breathing thrice in two seconds for every word, "I'm just not dead yet, and I don't know if I want to die and...you can follow if you want but...you're really not going to kill me..."
In the meantime, his mind had decided not to wait for a final decision about the large dancer-swimmer's sincerity. He started to take small sidesteps away from George toward the building, though he continued to fix his gaze upon the larger athlete. Fragile steps for a fragile, hastily-improvised plan of escape that would probably be shattered by the presence of the first person to exit the compound in his direction.
Re: All That I've Ever Known
Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:15 am
by blastinus
Ah dang, I think I made things worse.
In his haste to establish friendly relations, George failed to consider that the worst thing he could do was to seem pushy or overly friendly. Cisco right now seemed to be outright terrified of him, and under the circumstances, especially with his physique, he couldn't really blame him for that. The best thing he could do right now was to give Cisco some space and to apologize for the whole deal. Hopefully, the guy wouldn't get himself killed without a helping hand, but it was unlikely that George would have contributed much anyway.
"I don't plan to kill anybody," he said in a much slower voice. "Couldn't do it even if I wanted to. But seeing as you clearly don't trust me, I'll just be on my way then."
Walking in the opposite direction, with one hand on the strap of his daypack and the other in the pocket of his shorts, George turned his head around and shouted back, "See ya, Cisco! Be careful out there, okay?"
Now what am I going to do? First time I meet someone who isn't packing Carol Channing, I'm dead. Guess I'll find that out when I get there.
(George Leidman continued elsewhere)
Re: All That I've Ever Known
Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:16 am
by Sean*
Joe looked towards the people that were talking. Now that the grogginess was starting to wear off, he could make out a couple familiar faces. George Leidman, a decent guy by all accounts, was walking away from Cisco Vasquez, another okay person who Joe knew from a class in freshman year. If anything, Joe could trust Cisco for now.
Joe stood up.
"Yo, Cisco! Over here!" Joe exclaimed somewhat loudly while waving his hand at the boy. He was still worried about Rose, but that could wait a bit, as Joe doubted she was in any real danger just yet. From what little he knew about SOTF, the killing was going to take a while to start in earnest, and he could most likely rest on his laurels for a while until it did. Besides, Joe had a feeling that Rose pulled a good weapon. Hell, anything would have been better than the unwieldy piece of shit in his daypack.
Re: All That I've Ever Known
Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:16 am
by Ruggahissy
"Of course. No trouble at all. It's my pleasure."
Ethan handed her the cleaning cloth. He was concentrating his efforts into making sure he still looked kind and helpful. He gently placed a hand just above her knee.
"Have you checked your bag for a weapon yet?"
He leaned his head in the direction of the bag, but he continued to look at her as she inspected her glasses.
"Uh...I don't suppose you'd mind one more, would you?"
Cockblocked, he thought with an inward groan.
Ethan looked up at the person asking. His eyes searched the boy for anything of use. No weapon. He took his unoccupied hand and squeezed the bridge of his nose.
"Yeah, I guess," he mumbled. "Name's Ethan."
He was slightly annoyed that this new person didn't have a weapon for him to steal. However, he might prove useful in time, even if it was only as a meat shield.
"You hurt?"
Re: All That I've Ever Known
Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:16 am
by Super Llama*
"I'm Duncan, and I'm doing alright, thanks." Duncan said, not sure if that last question was directed at him or not, but whatever. It looked like, unless things went into a downward spiral really fast, he might've found a group to hang with for a little while. Neither of them (not noticing Cisco or Joe yet) seemed particularily hostile. This could offer him some protection til he could find...
"Maria." He had almost forgotten about her. The two of them ended up on different buses, but he was sure she was going on the trip, too. The two of them hadn't really talked very much since that one day, when Maria invited him over after Zach broke up wit her and...uh...
Duncan tried to think about something else to erase the sudden blush from his face. "Uh, I'm looking for someone. Maybe you've seen her. Her name's Maria Graham. Black hair with blue highlights. Kind of hyper." He hoped she was okay. She seemed like the kind of person who could last fairly long in the game, at least as far as physical fitness goes. He found himself hoping she hadn't lost it or anything as he waited for the others to respond.