Survival Of The Fittest

The last thing that went through Jack Dunlop's head was a burst of fully-automatic gunfire.

What was left of his skull smacked against the concrete wall of the building simply known as 'HQ' as he slumped to the ground, leaving a dark stain.

His watch partner had just about enough time to elect to choose self-preservation over sounding the alarm and raise his own gun before a high-calibre rifle round punched straight through his body armour, a gout of blood spouting from his back.

As the guard fell flat on his face, Dax Barrett looked up from the scope of his rifle and spoke into a microphone attached to a headset he was wearing. "Door's open. I'll keep watch out here. Good luck."

Calmly reloading his assault rifle, Corey Maslakow jerked his head towards the entrance to the building. "You heard him. Let's do it."

~*~

On Victor Danya's desk sits a picture.

It isn't overly elaborate, the frame is simple, the photograph within it faded with age. The scene depicted is simple, a family photo. Lillian Danya's smile is tired, very tired, yet for all that, proud. Held in her arms is a bundle of blankets, within which, just about visible, is a tiny little face. On the contrary, Victor's grin is an outright beam, couldn't be any happier if he tried. One arm is wrapped around his wife, and a paternal hand is on the shoulder of the fourth person in the picture; a teenaged boy. Tracen Danya is not smiling, but the fourteen-year-old is not the best at posing for photographs, so he is at least making an effort.

This small photograph is the only concession Victor makes to his life outside of Survival of the Fittest, the only hint to the man behind the persona of 'Mr. Danya', the man who takes a sadistic glee in tormenting the students his organisation kidnaps, the sick and twisted pervert. Victor Danya and Mr. Danya are not one and the same, though it would be foolish to suggest that there is no overlap whatsoever. Victor is not a pleasant individual, he is not a moral individual, but nor is all of the pleasure he supposedly derives from the suffering of others entirely genuine.

Many matters weigh heavily on Victor. Sometimes he vents his stress through his alter-ego, an alter-ego which extends even to his treatment of his subordinates and his demeanour around them. Perhaps if they knew everything, they would understand why he snaps so, why he gives such callous orders. Probably not. That is a solitary burden, something that cannot be shared even with the others that know of it. Mr. Danya is the centre of all.

Mostly, Victor's comfort is found in the picture. Its frame is smudged with a multitude of fingerprints. Many long hours have been spent in contemplation of it.

He is doing just that right now.

As gunshots rip through the air, startling him, Victor stands, hastily setting the photograph on his desk as he hurries out of the office.

It teeters a moment, tips, falls onto its face.

Down.

~*~

"WOULD SOMEBODY TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!?"

Predictably, Steve Wilson was not a happy man. The reports coming in were rushed, panicked, unsurprising for men and women fighting for their lives, exceedingly difficult for somebody trying to actually arrange a defence. All he could gather was that there was an unknown number of unknown assailants at an unknown location killing an UNKNOWN number of his fucking people! Wilson couldn't get even into contact with any of the patrols, whether those on land or forming a perimeter on boats. He was willing to stake his life that Sparky had something to do with all of this. They were being jammed, somehow.

Wilson's fists clenched tightly as he sat at his desk, messages spouting at him from every direction. He wasn't cut out for this sort of monitoring. He was a field commander, not a radio operator. Garbled messages emerged from speakers, all mingling and overlapping with each other.

"-Matthis is down! Matthis is down! We need to-"

"Quiet with your yammering! Stop running around like idiots, fall back and regroup!" Wilson allowed himself a tight smile. Sonia.

"Oh fuck, fuck, I'm hit!"

"-NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP, NEVER GONNA LET YOU DO-" ...

"Shit! All hands to the technical room IMMEDIATELY! We've got a serious problem!"

"Where the hell is Danya!?"

The burly terrorist slammed his hands onto the desk in front of him, seized his sidearm, and charged out of the room. No more waiting.

~*~

The sounds of raised voices and gunshot after gunshot reached the ears of Kwong Lei. He raised his weary head, barely able to even open his eyes. Even without the abuse his captors had subjected him to, he had been tied to a chair for more than a week. He'd been fed, watered, true enough, but he'd also been savagely beaten, at times it seemed almost for fun. Kwong, for a time, had given up all hope. This had happened so many times in the past, and it had taken the government months to even find the island, let alone traces of those running the show.

The almost gleeful fashion in which Danya reported the death of Liz Polanski to him had been the final straw, although even as the crushing news hit him, Kwong couldn't help but feel that there had been an edge to the man, a slight chink in the armour of confidence that had not been there the first time. Something had happened, something had gone awry in the man's plans. But to Kwong, well... it mattered little enough.

He was finished.

Yet now... Kwong felt the faintest stirrings in his chest. This was no live-fire exercise or training mission, this was a full-scale firefight. Who could possibly have done such a thing? Was it the government, finding their competence at last just in the nick of time? Another party? Some kind of internal dissension-?

The door to his cell opened with a clang and Kwong squeezed his eyes shut as the brightness of the light assailed him. He heard a sharp intake of breath.

"My god... those bastards. You... you must be Kwong," it was a girl, a fairly young one at that. Strong arms took gentle hold of him, and in a matter of moments, he was released from his bonds. Gingerly, the former teacher opened his eyes again to see a concerned face looking back at him. "My name's CeeJay Young. I'm here to help you."

A miracle.

~*~

Victor Danya was in the somewhat unique position of having a gun to his head.

Of course, he had been threatened before. The former winners of his game did have that tendency to pull weapons on him.

What he wasn't used to was being accosted in his own base, held in a chokehold and the barrel of a pistol pressed to the back of his skull. Oddly enough, he wasn't frightened.

There was no sense in it. He had better things to do with what time was left to him than plead or cry or rant and rave. If years of SOTF had taught Danya anything, it was not to waste those moments.

In any case, Danya wasn't dead yet. He might have had a burly youngster semi-choking him, but Maslakow had no apparent intentions of killing him right now. And Maslakow's position was... precarious.

Danya had been en route to Wilson's post when he ran directly into several heavily armed members of the group he remembered all too well as STAR. The Taskforce had lost many during V0.8. Danya had put a bullet in one of their stomachs before taking a rifle butt to the face, something which he was fairly certain had cracked his jaw. From there, he had been bundled into the technicians' room, there to be greeted by a terrified huddle including Lourvey and Dorian.

Now, it was a stand-off. STAR had him, the AT had the numbers... just on the wrong side of the door. Bust in, and they risked harming Danya. Not an order he was willing to give, that was for sure.

Maslakow wrested Danya around and fixed a cowering Lourvey with a glare. The technician was sitting at the workstation that had once belonged to Sparky.

"Do it. Do it right now."

Lourvey shuddered and began to type away. Corey smiled, then spoke into his headset.

"Island teams... you are good to go. Repeat, you are good to go."

Hi, everyone! Assuming you've read the fluff, you have probably noticed that midmonth is a little bit different from usual. That extends to rolls, too: there are none.

Instead, there is the rescue operation. Unlike the V3 escape, this is pretty public. There are only a couple of caveats.

First, STAR has a list of murderers and players who they are refusing to bring along, for reasons outlined in the landing posts. The list follows:

Maxwell Lombardi
Reiko Ishida
Raidon Naoko
Hayley Kelly
Ema Ryan
Kris Hartmann
Ilario Fiametta
Liam Brooks
Rachel Gettys
Quincy Jones
Peter Siu
Jimmy Brennan
Nick LeMonde
Teo Weinstock
Janet Binachi
Ericka Bradley
Alex White
George Leidman
Joe Rios

The list was generated by picking multiple murderers who lacked incredibly good justifications for their actions, as well as single killers who were clearly both playing the game and working with other killers. If you really want to argue that your character should not be on the list, feel free to PM Help, but your justifications, to succeed, must be based on things observable to someone watching SOTF without the benefit of access to your character's inner thoughts. Also, "Clearly rescue is impossible so we should just give up" is probably not gonna fly as a justification, given current events.

While there is no in character justification for the following, rolled characters are also ineligible for participation here. It would be completely unfair to reward people for going over deadlines.

Assuming you have unrolled characters in play who are not on this list, you may, if you want, get them involved in the rescue as follows:

-No more than one character per handler may be rescued during this event. To prevent abuse, any characters handed off from now until the end of the event count as belonging to the handler who had them as of this announcement being posted for the purposes of the content of this message.
-Time is highly limited. In character, STAR is grabbing everyone they can get in about three hours, and leaving everyone else. Out of character, you have just a bit beyond the usual death deadline to get characters out. Specifically, you have twelve days. There will be absolutely no extensions and no breaks cut. If you are Away and want to have one of your characters rescued, get in contact with a handler who is around and arrange it to be handled through them. To my knowledge, no handlers are without means of accessing the boards for the entire duration of this period.
-You may post in the two escape threads following normal post protocol. They are totally open. Post order will likely be a bit looser than usual, given the potential influx of characters. Please be sure, though, to tag one of your character's posts with STUDENT NUMBER, STUDENT NAME: ELIMINATED. This will serve as notice that you want your character rescued. If you have left this tag, you have given Help permission to GM the removal of your character's collar and their removal from the island at the end of the time period.

The code is as follows: That's about it. Huge thanks to everyone who worked tirelessly on V4 escape plans, fruitful or not. Things would be very different without your efforts. And yeah, I know not one of you actually suspected anything would come of your actions, but what's the game without some surprises, eh? As it happened, there actually was a group equipped to help out in the area when the distress signals went out.