Survival Of The Fittest

((They wasted no time putting the asylum behind them.))

Too many identical, gray corridors; too many corners. Decayed as it was, it was still a hospital through and through - a place to wander and waste away; to die in a forgotten and sterile corner of the world. Nothing good could come from remaining in such a place. Besides, after hesitating to leave the roof for so long, it'd feel hollow if they just settled down twenty feet away from where they'd started, losing a reminder of the world outside and gaining nothing but a weak sense of security.

As they made their way down the asylum stairwell, Cass had paused once they had reached the landing where they had woken up the previous day. It meant nothing and everything; both completely nondescript, a meaningless transitional space, and a gravestone. Cass tried to remember what they had been feeling as the world ended, tried to picture their breaking self walking corpse-like up the stairs before them, mechanically walking forwards toward what could have easily been their death.

They failed, which was probably for the best. The mop lying on the ground was the only proof that Cass really had been there; that they hadn't just popped into existence shortly before finding Trav, before the world had starting seeming actually real. They needed to remember not to take his presence for granted. What would have happened if Cass had chosen any other direction, had descended instead of ascended? It wasn't worth dwelling on. Their life was going to be short enough without thinking of the mistakes they could have made. Cass picked up the mop for a second, thought better of it, and then leaned it against the wall. If it hadn't been for the piece of paper inside their bag confirming that it was supposed to be theirs, they would have mistaken it as nothing but debris. Even with that knowledge, Cass didn't have any particular obligation to hold onto a terrorist's "gift" and fulfill the unspoken expectation to cling on to every scrap they were handed.

Their walk was uneventful, though it felt good to stretch their legs after being cooped up on the roof for so long. Cass idly thought that it was perfect weather for a bike ride. Unfortunately, given the island's state, they doubted there were any usable trails. It would have been a perfect retreat under any other circumstance, with nothing preventing them from flying across the island, stopping only to explore the reclaimed nature around them.

The chapel's garden was proof enough of this, opportunistic weeds edging out mankind's aesthetic vision; some of which still shined through in patches. Comparing them side by side, Cass couldn't help but admire them both. Though the weeds were dull and prickly, they thrived without a care for their unwanted disorder. The flowers that remained were doing their best, too; remnants of likely long-dead people who had cared for them, arranged them to be pleasing to the eye.

It was everything they had hoped the chapel to be, honestly. Even without a faith to tie them to it, Cass had always respected churches and cathedrals. They were old, dignified beasts; places where people came to be granted peace. Though this one was old and humbled, it still carried a weight; and irrational as it was, Cass had dared to dream that even the terrorists had yet to violate its sanctity.

Of course, the real world was never that kind. It didn't take long for Cass to find Jane's stripped corpse.

They hated that they felt relieved as they glanced at her face, briefly met her dead, half-closed eyes; confirmed that she wasn't anyone that Cass cared about. They couldn't bear to look any longer than that, to take in the deep wound in her neck that all-too-clearly spelled out what had happened to her, quickly averting their gaze. Cass found it odd that they weren't breaking down into tears or vomiting or doing any of the things one would expect after finding their first dead body.

Maybe it just hadn't set in fully yet. Maybe the horror had been edged out by the fury Cass felt on Jane's behalf. Shouldn't it have been enough for her killer to take her life? What twisted rationale had lead them to then defile her memory, to leave her forever exposed and vulnerable in front of the uncaring eyes of the cameras? There was no purpose except spite; nothing to gain from it except a destructive satisfaction. Maybe that had been all it took. Cass would have asked how their classmates already sunken so low, if they hadn't a sinking suspicion that maybe, just maybe, the faceless sadist hadn't had to change at all.

"Trav, you - you shouldn't come over here. Fuck - there's a dead girl, and..." Cass trailed off, voice breaking slightly. Had Jane been important to Trav? If he saw her corpse, would Cass witness him break right in front of their eyes, see the Jane-that-was be instantly replaced by the Jane-that-is in his mind, the shock and revulsion inescapably burning the image into his memory? They unconsciously positioned themself between the two, hoping to shield Jane from view. "It's - she's - Jane."

((Irene Djezeri Continued From Escape the Fate))

How many ways could you mangle and humiliate your classmates? Was that the contest they were playing? Everybody she came across seemed to have been ruined in a different way. Were there points? Was someone judging? Is that the kind of thing they took into mind when they squawked about a "best kill award" over the loudspeakers? How did that even work? They just crowd around and pick through people's darkest moments over and over again, and then, what? Whoever was the most original or horrifying got a pat on the head and a prize?

God. How completely fucked did you have to be to willingly put yourself through that? How fucked did you have to be to win it? After what she'd seen the last few days...Cristo must have been a real mess. It made her stomach turn to think of what must have been done to get their attention, and it was all on Kimiko. Yeah, Cristo was kind of a creep and a weirdo and awkward as they get, but he was harmless. An annoyance. All her anger at him and so many other people felt so petty now. Had Kimiko hated him so much that she had to kill him? Or did it just happen?

She couldn't answer that. But as she looked into garden at Jane's exposed corpse, she felt like she had a pretty good answer about what had happened here. This wasn't an accident. Someone hadn't just gotten scared and run. The wound was so close, so specific, and she'd been picked clean of everything but her bra. She couldn't look away. The others, maybe those had just been accidents, or maybe hurried, panicked moments, but you couldn't make any excuses here. And if there was one body, one murder like this already, then what else was out there?

It was only going to get worse. She could feel it in her churning guts, consumed by it to the point that Cass's horror barely stirred her from her spot just out of view on her bag. "Y-yeah," she called out weakly, clutching the shotgun to her chest. Johnny Three wouldn't help her in that position; she couldn't fire, or even aim. Somehow though, the gun was like a security blanket. The reassurance that she could do something, even if she wasn't, was enough. "It's really her. They got her too."

Cass might be shocked, but by her third body, Irene was starting to get numb to the idea. It was only going to get worse. There was a prize to chase, and the crazy people that did stuff like this were gonna chase it like an S-Rank.

((Travis Lynch continued from Five Finger Death Punch))

He had never seen a body before which wasn't surprising, he lived in Kingman to begin with. It was weird though how little the idea truly bothered him. His stomach wrenched and for a split-second he went slightly dizzy but once that passed he didn't really feel anything. Cass stepped in the way before he got a good look at it which Trav didn't protest, he didn't want to stare at a fresh corpse and imagine the life they could have had. He didn't know Jane all that well, she was in his year but beyond that he know nothing about her. He felt a strange pang of guilt about that.

The body was the first sign of another person they had seen since they'd left the roof. It must have been some form of miracle that they hadn't met someone else at any point, but the asylum was bigger than perhaps Trav had realised, being on the roof had distanced him and maybe distorted his sense of scale. The place itself was a depressing ruin. The signs of its inhabitants sometimes still visible, he had wondered what had made people ship their family members and loved ones off to the place. In a way it was perfect for whatever the terrorists expected them to do. People had been being shipped to the island to die years before they had arrived on it.

The chapel wasn't immune to the same foreboding feeling Trav had about the whole place. It looked like it had taken the passage of time better than the main building from the outside but the gardens showed clearly how after everything was done the world was just going to continue as if nothing had happened. Plenty of profound statements could have been made, but Trav didn't enjoy considering philosophy that mainly revolved around his death.

"Shit." He breathed, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. It was the best he could really manage. "Didn't really know her but..." Then another voice interrupted, causing Trav to visibly jump for the second time in as many days.

"Jesus christ." Trav said, placing his hands on his knees and laughing out of pure nerves. He raised a hand, index finger up. "Don't, be doing that." He straightened up and looked in the direction the voice came from to see a girl from the year below, Ivy? No, Irene. Yeah, Irene. Irene. And she had a shotgun. Trav wasn't a fan of that, luckily it didn't look like she had any intention of using it.

"Yeah." He said voice steady again. "It's fucked."

There it was again; the terrible relief that Jane's death had remained an abstract tragedy. She could have been anyone and their reaction would have been the same. Horror, but not a personal horror. Cass hadn't known Jane, hadn't talked to her more than once or twice, and the moment they found her corpse would remain the strongest impact Jane would ever have on Cass's life. If what they had wanted was to destroy Jane's memory, the killer had already won, and there was nothing they could do about it.

These musings were derailed as Irene called out from behind Cass; causing them to shriek and whirl around. They almost tripped on Jane's corpse as they did so, transforming the tragedy into a slapstick comedy and degrading her even further. They didn't, thank god. Cass had always been infuriatingly easy to startle, especially when they were zoned in on their art; a trait that Marco took advantage of with irritating regularity. There was a strange comfort to that familiar shock, though.

That comfort faded as Irene emerged from behind the shrubbery that had been obscuring her, clutching a shotgun tight to her chest. Cass's stomach sank. She wasn't threatening them, didn't even look angry or confrontational in the slightest, but the gun was more than enough to terrify. Cass had never been comfortable around guns, even in theory, much to Chris's annoyance. She had taken them along to a shooting range once, hoping that familiarity would take the edge off their fear; but all it had done was cement it. Everything had been too loud, too easy. In the end, they couldn't take it; leaving after an hour. To Chris's credit, she had never brought it up again.

Back to the present. Irene. Gun.

Cass nodded in agreement as Trav expressed his displeasure with the entire situation. What Irene had said seemed odd, like maybe she knew something. Had she been hiding out in the church, armed but too frightened to do anything but watch as Jane was murdered before her eyes? It'd explain how shaken she seemed. Cass didn't want to know, didn't want to learn who among them had been a monster the entire time; but they couldn't help but guess, to demonize the people they disliked based off nothing more than a vague gut feeling of wrongness; a disservice even to the assholes among them. If Irene knew for certain, Cass had to ask.

"They got her?"

There was a lot of incredulity wound up in that they. Trav seemed to be taking the whole thing in a stride, but Cass had honed in on her, and it didn't take long for Irene to realize why. They implied an object, a person or group of persons in mind, which could shed light on this whole thing. Give them some advanced warning on who to look out for, all that jazz. It'd be nice to have something like that. They'd probably think less of her for seeing it and doing nothing, but at least she could help. At least she could tell them something useful.

Instead, Irene swallowed and squeezed Johnny Three a little harder, nodding her head. "They. Y'know just..." There was a group in mind. But it wasn't whoever had killed Jane specifically. Even if Irene wasn't the most popular girl in school or something, she felt like she knew almost everyone, especially among the juniors and seniors. The Cochise classes were a group, an us, a collection of people with a shared connection by proximity. There was fighting, and disagreeing, and cliques, but they were all still part of a group. Irene just couldn't conceive the people would murdered their classmates as part of us, though, and so they became they. "The murderers, I mean," she finished quietly. "I...Jane's not the first. First body I've seen, like, there was Josh, and..." She didn't know where she was going with this. She just curled up a little more and stared at the ground.

"I never thought any of us could do something like that."

And so us hadn't. They had.

Cass homed in on the they, something Trav had missed completely. Thank god she was travelling with him. He wasn't sure if she was right or anything like that, but she obviously paid attention to the details. Irene for her part still didn't look like a threat in anyway, shape or form but she was definately acting weird, especially with the whole silently watching them look at a body deal she had going. That was weird and creepy.

He raised an eyebrow and glanced over at Cass as Irene stumbled through her explanation.

"Don't worry, we're not a judge and jury." He grinned, he had deliberately left out executioner there. It seemed a bit too strong.

Trav rubbed his ear near where it had gone all cauliflowered. He guessed this was the reality they had been avoiding on the roof. Not knowing the truth of what anyone said or if they were planning something. Never knowing if the next person they saw would try to kill them. It was a lot to have to consider and plan around, but if they wanted to find their friends they would have to dive in to their new world.

That didn't mean Trav was going to let it get to him but then he supposed he was lucky in one respect. In basically every close combat situation he had the advantage, not that he intended to use it against others unless threatened. But what it did give him was a feeling of relative safety, he knew that he could dump someone upside down on the ground before they could react. That helped make him relaxed, or at least as relaxed as he could realistically be given the scenario.

"Honestly, I don't think anyone did." He said looking back over Jane's body. It was like he had said originally, it was fucked.

Cass nodded slowly as Irene explained herself. That way of thinking made perfect sense, really. It was scary to think about the cruelty everyone hid in their hearts, to at least some degree. Intrusive, spiteful thoughts; harbored envy and wrath. That didn't mean humans were inherently evil, of course - most people wanted to be good, and thus acknowledged and dealt with those harmful impulses, hid them away so they'd never bet set aflame under the light of day. They could never go away entirely, though. Regardless, Jane's killer would have to remain a question mark, a constantly shifting silhouette that could bear anyone's face.

"There's not much any of us can do, anyway," Cass agreed with Trav. Even if Irene had known, what could they do with that information? Would either of them, spoiled by blissful isolation, have been able to fight for their lives at a moment's notice? Even Irene with her gun didn't seem prepared to use it, which was, for the moment, fortunate for all of their well-beings.

They wished they could echo Trav and Irene's sentiment and say that no, this wasn't normal or expected, that they could easily reject the others; but honestly? With the benefit of a day to prepare and think, Cass hadn't been surprised at all by the morning announcement's naming of killers, plural. The level of malice displayed by Jane's dead body had been a shock, but even that wasn't unexpected. It was the nature of the game, after all: reach deep into people's psyches and bring everything up to the surface. Slowly unravel some, enjoy a slow decay stretched across days of suffering. Sever others completely.

Instead, Cass looked at Irene, saw themself in her anxious, curled stance. She hadn't been spared any of the pain that they had lived above for a day. "Hey - you, uh, want some company? Trav and I, we're not really doing anything, y'know? Maybe we could, I dunno, find a better place to be," Cass said softly, leaving out the 'because there's a corpse and you really look like you shouldn't be alone right now.' They didn't want Irene to feel pitied.

We can't do anything. That was the message they both kept repeating. We're helpless. Things just keep happening and there's no way to stop any of it. And maybe they were right, at least for themselves. Maybe there wasn't anything that they could do.

Johnny Three pressed against her chest to remind her that she could do something. That if she'd been around, maybe she could have stopped people like Josh, and Jane, and the others from dying. But it also reminded her that stopping death might mean causing it. The image of the gouged earth, so close to where Jeremy had been standing, hung in her mind. It could have been any number of they.

Maybe it should have been.

She wasn't there yet though. Instead, they pulled her along to a new line of thought: Cass mentioned company. It was sweet of them, but it immediately brought to mind Hannah and Olivia, scattered out there wherever because she'd run off like a total ditz and left them to figure it out their little Scooby Doo Sorority Adventure for themselves. She'd really Daphne'd that up. "I, uh, lost some friends," she began as she started to sit up. Her eyes widened as the implication caught up to her. "They're not dead! I mean, I don't think so, I hope not, just, we got separated, and..."

Blabbering. Lots of blabbering.

"Just, like, as long as you don't mind me keeping an eye out for them is all, I wanna make sure they're safe..."

God. It hadn't occurred to her just how badly she'd screwed up until now.

((Wade Cartwright continued from Thursday's Child.))

That panicked rush hadn't lasted long at all, of course. It never did. Whether it was because he ran out of stamina or ran out of island or had burned through his supply of utter all-consuming PANIC was anyone's guess, really. Whatever it had been, he ended up on the cliffs between the asylum and the large bay that defined the island's geography, thinking. A sort of anger had grown out of his frustration the night before.

And that was all down to thought. He didn't and wasn't thinking through his actions properly. Emotions kept getting the better of him, seizing the controls and shutting down any sort of rational decisionmaking. Perhaps that was just his real nature. Or it could've been a consequence of the particularly extreme life-or-death situation he was now going through, but it was frustrating nonetheless.

He wasn't trying to methodically think things through and formulate plans of action and then actually follow through with them, no. All his addled mind was allowing was to stumble around half-cocked and running off whenever things looked sketchy. This allowed him to coast through normal life, but here it would just get him killed in short order. That much was certain.

So he needed a plan. Think. Think. Think.

The bridge wasn't very far. If he made it to the other side, he could quickly slip into one of the buildings there and be relatively unnoticed by anyone who wasn't already inside. On the other hand, something about all the long stretches of the island that were exposed made him nervous. He was already utterly helpless against any would-be sniper with good aim or any melee-armed player out there with eagle eyes, no need to accentuate that. The sharp elevation changes across the island were intensely unnerving too. One wrong move on those slopes, one slip on the bridge's edge, and he'd go careening helplessly to his death. Shiver. Not a happy thought. Plus, the port death zone essentially blocked anyone trying to move through the slopes. Or so it seemed, anyway.

That left the area behind the bell tower and the crematorium grounds. Though there were a few marked features beyond the tower, none of them really caught Wade's eye. As much as he appreciated natural beauty, human works and buildings always called his attention first. Because, on some level, people would be there. Interacting with people should've been a top priority of his from the start, as risky as it was at this point. Teaming up with someone was probably a decent bet. People weren't that traitorous at this early phase and he might even meet up with a person he knew. Just talking to them would probably help stave off insanity, too.

And even as some part of him felt that going to the crematorium was a retrogression, a retreat-- as he'd already been on this side of the asylum-- he understood it was his only other real bet to find others now that everywhere else had been ruled out. It was only a short walk from the side of the asylum, as well.

He neared, and saw the chapel's doors had been sealed tightly with rope. No matter, the gardens around it were sure to have someone loitering around. and then a faint commotion was enough to confirm their presence. But when he entered the alley between the two, deathstink attacked his nostrils once again, and he braved the current of fear that the smell brought. By the second, it was becoming more and more familiar to him, which was... disconcerting, to say the least. But whoever had killed this person probably hadn't lingered here.

Against his instinct, he turned the corner and saw a glimpse of a half-naked young woman lying in the grass with what was undoubtedly a gaping bullet wound in her neck. No name came to mind, which meant only one thing -- she must've died earlier today. Fear, but then anger. The fuck who shot her must have looted her, too. For what purpose? The terrorists had allowed them to keep their original bags, although stripped of apparently everything beside food and clothing. Dark thoughts of perverts and nutcases invaded his mind.

He tried his level best to dispel the emotion. No. Stay cool, collected, thinking. Peer again. There were people standing nearby, seemed distraught somehow. Probably about the corpse, so they weren't the killers then, that was good. He could speak to them, he could do it, just picture the words he wanted clearly in mind and say them. He moved from behind the corner and toward them, in spite of the part of him screaming to leave. A glint of pride in his thoughts? No, the name of one of those he saw. One he faintly recognized, at least.

"Irene--?" He couldn't remember her surname, and it was too late to anyways.

Trav shrugged and forced a smile.

"Sure thing. That's what we're basically doing anyway."

Was Irene acting weird? Yes. Was it entirely understandable? Yes. Trav wasn't going to blame the girl for reacting the situation she found herself in the way she was. It wasn't her fault they were on the island. Trav was one-hundred percent certain no one woke up in the morning wanting to end up in a Survival of the Fittest game. It wasn't something normal people prepared for mentally or physically in their everyday lives. Hell he'd been training to fight people for a living and he wasn't certain he'd be able to deal with every situation that came his way. His only real goal was finding Noodle and looking after Cass. What was one more person? The cynical part of Trav also thought that having a girl with a shotgun in their group would be a great deterrent for anyone planning on attacking them.

Then some other boy approached them from around the vegetation. Trav felt his body tense, preparing to strike if the need arose. The boy didn't look like anything special and didn't appear to have a weapon. After the shotgun, Trav appeared to be the apex predator in the jungle the gardens had become. Luckily the boy put to rest any doubt about his intentions when he announced his presence. He knew Irene and didn't appear to be making any moves to attack. Trav had no idea who he actually was though.

"Hey." Trav raised a hand in greeting. Suddenly Trav missed how quiet the roof had been.

"Yeah, it's not a problem," Cass said; trying not to dwell on their envy of Irene having found friends to lose. They couldn't imagine any reasonable circumstance where you could somehow manage to separate yourself from the people you cared about during the last days of your life. Cass knew that if they ever found Bernie or Clarice, they'd give anything to stay with her; thoughts of being a burden swept away by the sheer comfort of being with a dear friend.

That didn't mean their disbelief at Irene's circumstances was any less stupid or uncharitable, though. Cass knew it was none of their business, and there had definitely been much left unspoken. Still, her luck stung. Just a little.

These thoughts derailed as a fourth person stumbled across the tragedy scene, unfamiliar and giving them nothing to go off of.

"Uh, hey." Cass waved half-heatedly.

Wade was...a guy. A guy Irene knew. Technically. It felt like the universe was throwing in her face how surface level most of her connections where one more time though, what with him focusing in on her out of everybody here. I mean, he was here, and a live, so maybe she should be happy to see him just for that? Was that enough? Or would that be freaky?
Was she staring? Did this look really stupid?

She gave him a quick little wave. "Heeeeey..."

So. This is what they were doing. A bunch of people who didn't know each other all that well, standing around bumping into each other and trying to pretend the whole thing wasn't painfully awkward.

Fuck. They were right. High school never ends.

'Hey.'

'Hey.'

'Hey.' Three times in a row. 'Hey'. Not exactly that, of course, but something reasonably like it. All variations on a theme. One all too familiar by now, and one that still brought an awful sting wherever he was aware of it. He couldn't help but feel a little angry at them as it popped up, even though he knew it was no fault of their own that he had caught them off-guard. Awkwardness made him vulnerable, made him mortal, made him fallible.

Every time he slipped up, he lost opportunities for growth and advancement, every time he slipped up he lost a chance to do something or make a change in value that was meaningful. Every time he slipped up, his life lost a tiny little bit of potential value, and so did the world, as he feared to think.

Not this time, though. Not here. Think, Wade, think. Why did you come here? What are you hoping to gain from this? What are you after? Think. Be honest with yourself. Be true to yourself.

Of course.

"I'll be honest with you here. I'm looking to tag-team it with someone. You're familiar. One of you is, anyway."

He still stumbled and tripped over the line, it still didn't live up to what he envisioned in his mind's ear. But it would just have to work.

The boys sentence was disjointed and broken, Trav's eyebrow went up. He wanted to work with someone, emphasis on the one. He wasn't sure what the kid was suggesting but it sounded strange and honestly like he just wanted to work with someone to kill.

Trav shook his head. He was sticking with Cass, no questions about that one. He wouldn't stop Irene, he guessed that was her name, if she wanted to go with the mystery man but he wasn't going anywhere. He guessed if Cass wanted to go with him Trav would follow, But he didn't think she would.

If he was being honest Trav knew that they had been very lucky in how little of the ugliness of the game the two them had encountered. It was why moving off the roof had been such a risk, it felt like whatever had been separating the two worlds; theirs and the games had been broken as they had descended the stairs. Now they had to face the facts of not knowing what way any given interaction would go. If he said or did the wrong thing would the shotgun end up being used?

It was hard to say. He had no insight into how others were feeling or what their mental state may have been at any given moment.

"I'm alright." He said. "Got someone I'm looking for."

What was there to say?

If it had been an ordinary day, if the four of them had simply happened to occupy a certain stretch of the hall at school at once or something, Cass doubted any of them would have spared even a glance for the others. Wade for Irene, maybe, but even she seemed at a loss from his appearance. Their new commonality of mortal peril was the only thing keeping them there; grasping for any shred of normalcy they could, even while one of them carried a gun while they exchanged hesitant greetings over a dead girl. Much preferable to the alternative, of course, and in the case of Trav it had paid off wonderfully. Cass only wished that they had met each other sooner. But sometimes? Normalcy still sucked.

It was almost a relief when Wade made his intentions clear, dispelling any need for social pretense and small talk. His dismissal of Irene as 'familiar' confirmed Cass's suspicions of their relationship, or lack thereof. Cass could understand not wanting to be around crowds of strangers, wanting to cling to a special, singular person while everything unraveled around you, but his insistence on "tag-teaming" regardless of his companion was troubling. It sounded strategic, and Cass couldn't help but mistrust anyone who was actively playing along and making plans. Wanting just one person implied that you didn't particularly care what happened to the rest.

"I, uh, don't think it's good - I just don't think any of us want to split up, y'know?" Cass said, awkwardly rubbing the back of their neck. They didn't want to assume Irene's position, but she definitely looked uncomfortable; especially considering how Wade was appealing to her specifically. "I mean, if you want company, I don't mind if you tag along, but..." They didn't want to completely alienate Wade, either, considering how fast Cass had been to assume the worst of him.