Starting Point for G007

[MethodicalSlacker]

She should have listened to the Ouija board.

[G007 — Violet Schmidt: Game Start]

Instead, she was standing on a pier out on a beach with no people desired here, nobody that she wanted to see. Woke up right on top of it, she did. It wasn't calm that filled her upon awakening, nor was it panic. When they moved to the new bus, she felt something inside her twinge with panic, and guilt, but she suppressed it. Dumb unconscious mind, guiding the planchette. Not her fault, nothing she could do, nope. Here she was! If anyone was prepared, it was her. She read all about it. She knew the grisly details. All her, all her! She was pacing back and forth, now, next to a railing, gun leaned up against her bag leaned against wood. If she wanted to go home—and she did, badly—she'd need to use that thing. It didn't seem all too hard. She'd never shot a gun, but she'd seen them a lot in video games. With this, she didn't even need to get close enough to people that they could touch her!

And, okay, if rituals needed to happen, she had a robe. It was black with red accents on the hems and fringes, and she had packed it in her backpack to use as a blankie snuggie thing while she slept. They gave it to her in a duffel bag, but took most of her magickal gear. No wand, no candles, nothing. Maybe she had done this, when she hexed the President? Maybe this was all her fault for jinxing it. She didn't believe in coincidence; this was synchronicity at work. She was here, and she was scared, and she had no idea what the hell to do, but she also was none of those things. Violet was steeled. Pre-steeled for this situation!

But her emotions just couldn't catch up with her thoughts!

Frustrated, she kept pacing, back and forth and back and forth, feet feeling like they'd melted through the ground, muttering to herself. She ran her hands through her hair and half expected spiders to come out.

"My fault," she mumbled, "my fault!"

[Fenris]

Dante tried to remember the rosary but came up empty. He wondered if God would forgive him. He wondered if God was paying attention, since this seemed like the kinda place his help would be pretty useful.

But this kinda thing kept happening, so he wondered, and felt guilty for wondering, if God had maybe just turned away.

[B040] DANTE VALERIO: START

He woke up leaning against something wooden, blinking dry sleep from his eyes, his head hazy, his hand already on his rosary ring, a nervous instinct he'd kept on since he was a kid. There was sand in his shoes, and also sand everywhere else. He moved his leg, and there was seaweed stuck to it. He peeled it off, and for some reason decided to smell it. It smelled like salt, but so did everything else. You could eat seaweed, right? Like some people did that? Probably this wasn't the eating kind of seaweed but it wasn't like Dante knew the difference, he hadn't been to a beach since the last time he was in Italy, which was... a long time ago. Years. His sisters had been so little. Bea hadn't even been born yet, he was pretty sure. Adriana had been just a baby.

He thought he was allowed to reminisce even though it was kind of a stupid time and place for it since he probably didn't have all that much time left to do it.

It was weird, how quickly he took to that fact, how quickly he accepted it, but... it was. It was what it was. He was going to die. What was the alternative, here? What other plan could he possibly have? He couldn't bear the thought of even hurting someone, let alone killing them, the concept twisted his stomach in knots. Maybe he'd luck out and make it to the end anyway, but he remembered what that man had said, in his hazy memories, that awful, awful demonstration.

If he didn't kill anyone, he couldn't leave. He wouldn't kill anyone, so, math? Logic? Something. Something told him he didn't have any good answers.

So when he felt tears start streaming down his face, they weren't for him. ... Maybe they were. Maybe they were for him, a little, because he didn't want to die, his family needed him, his sisters would be inconsolable, it wasn't fair to them. But more they were for everyone, his friends, the people he barely knew, every fucking person on this island, because not a single one of them deserved a fate like this. Maybe that was kinda lame of him, but he was a pretty lame dude, so maybe he should just ride that as far as it took him.

He wiped his tears and stood. There were... bags? He took them, not really paying much attention. There was stuff in them, probably. He didn't really know what he was doing, just going somewhere, he guessed. He took a few steps and realized that he'd been leaning on the support of a pier, jutting out into the water. There were steps leading up. He took them.

... Someone was there.

"Violet?"

His voice cracked.

[MethodicalSlacker]

She stopped in place and turned her head to the right so fast that it hurt.

"Wuh," Violet managed.

Person. Person, right over there. Didn't matter who—Dante?—but that was already a threat to assess. And this was a wide, wide open space, so there could be many, many more people, everywhere, looking at her from the lighthouse, from the ship, from the shore, she was an idiot for not getting to cover sooner. A big, big idiot!

She turned and lunged for her gun, picking up the rifle and pointing it right in Dante's general direction. It wasn't even loaded—right? she hadn't checked, but they usually didn't start loaded, right?—but he didn't need to know that. Her hands were shaking really badly, and the gun went with them—even if she had loaded it, she wouldn't have been able to get a shot on him at all. Violet's whole body was shaking, come to think of it. Her eyes were peeled wide open, though no tears formed at their corners, and her mouth like a door was slightly ajar.

"Don't move!" she stammered, "Please, don't come any closer!"

She took a step away from the railing, positioning herself more to the center.

"I don't, I don't want to hurt you!"

[Fenris]

Oh. Oh shit.

Maybe he should've expected that. Maybe he should've expected something like that, anyway. Wasn't like he knew her all that well; she seemed like a nice girl, though. Kind. He didn't think she'd want to hurt him. He still didn't think she wanted to hurt him, but what anyone wanted in a situation like this didn't really matter all that much, did it? She looked more than a little panicked, and probably he should be more panicked than he was, so that was pretty fair, right? That rifle, though. He'd forgotten to check his bags for a weapon, not that it mattered, since whatever it was he didn't plan on using it, but maybe if he was holding it Violet would...

... No, that was a fucking shitty way to start thinking, especially now. Nothing had happened yet. Violet was a nice girl, she didn't seem like it, she was, and the island wasn't going to change that so quickly. She was just afraid. That was something he could help with, maybe, if she'd let him.

He dropped both his bags to his sides and raised his arms in the universal stance for "I surrender", not making any moves toward her.

"H-hey, uh, sorry. Sorry, didn't mean to... to startle you. I ain't here to hurt you. Or anybody else, neither, so, uh, if you could put the gun down that'd be great."

[MethodicalSlacker]

Violet gulped.

Either she was doing the worst thing possible and scaring off someone who wanted to be her friend, or she was doing something just as bad and was so cruddy at being threatening that he was comfortable doing that in front of her. Her knowledge of the way things usually went was telling her to act in the way most beneficial to her. Keep the gun level, and tell him to get down on the ground, it said. Make him remove his clothes first, so that he couldn't hide anything. Take his belongings and get moving, ditching your bag and your robes for his things. They were probably the same anyways.

But the part of her that was her was telling her the opposite.

So, she lowered the gun a couple inches, pointing now at his legs. A compromise, while it was still possible.

"You say that now," she said, trying and failing to edge some more calmness into her voice.

"Everyone will say that, at first."

[Latin For Dragula]

"Shut up."

The voice was harsh. Guttural even. It hardly sounded human. It came from below the stairs Dante had just walked up. His fault, really. The creaking had disturbed them in the first place.

"I'm trying to sleep."

((B066- Blaise d'Aramitz))

Blaise was not unaware of their predicament. Of course they recalled Ms. Garcia's head blooming open. The words were hazy but the tone of the following monologue lingered with them. Drugs were not slowing their mental processes so much to assume it had been a dream. The evidence was all around from the small glance they'd taken around them. They had been kidnapped, they had witnessed a murder, they had been ordered to kill their friends, and they had woken up to such a situation playing out over their head.

They simply didn't care.

There was no rush, and nowhere immediately more comfortable than the dune and bag they'd woken up sleeping on. They could shift the other to prop up their feet, but that was a negligible benefit. Better to retire here for a time and wait for all the paranoia and machismo to blow over. Then they could reach out for some sort of reasonable conversation. It was hard to tell which girl was harping on above at this level of commitment, but it was precisely what they were trying to avoid. Threatened by Dante of all people? Why he-

Ah, they were awake now. They might as well vocalize their protests.

"Dante would not even raise a hand to someone stabbing him to death," they called out lazily. "If you must test this, know that like every woman who has sought such intimacy with him you will be...disappointed."

[Fenris]

"Yo. Harsh."

Dante heard the unmistakable voice coming from somewhere below his feet of Blaise d'Aramitz, which was like, a weird place for a voice to be coming from, especially since he'd been down there a minute ago, but he realized there was kind of a nook behind the stairs he would have had to had intentionally looked into to have spotted them. Kinda figured that it'd be Blaise. He didn't even know what he meant like that. Maybe just that Blaise found the weirdest moments to wiggle their way into his life. Not that he'd ever minded, they were good people, in their weird... Blaise-ish way. He didn't really have words for them. Like he'd had to say "yeah, that's Blaise" a lot in the past. They seemed to like him anyway. He liked them, too. That wasn't complicated.

He was happy to see them, but also he wished so badly they were about a thousand miles away from here, or however far away Tennessee was. Them and so many others. Friends. The track team. Aurelien. ... Aurelien.

His chest hurt. Aurelien. He hadn't forgotten, but he hadn't wanted to think about it either. Aurelien, Aurelien was somewhere. Somewhere here and not at home and he couldn't have done anything to stop it and it wasn't his fault but this wasn't the time, there was still a gun pointed at him. He took a deep breath. Later. There would be time later. Maybe, if he wasn't dead before later, which would be a bummer, so he was gonna work on not being dead, ideally.

"But, uh..." His voice was shakier than it had been, and it had already been shaking pretty hard. "They're probably right. Not that anyone's ever stabbed me to death. Working on keeping it that way."

He glanced down at the boards of the pier that Blaise was presumably still underneath. "Still harsh on the second part, dude."

[MethodicalSlacker]

At the sound of the voice from underneath the stairs, Violet went from incidentally pointing the rifle down towards the ground to actively aiming between the floorboards. There was, in fact, someone else here! Her earlier suspicion had been confirmed. That was no spirit speaking, no, but a real human being! She began to shake again. Did they really think she was so easily psyched out? Deliberately confusing her like that wouldn't work, no.

"Sh-show yourself!" she shouted, "Get where I can see you, please!"

She just wanted this to be open. This was a situation where she had no control over anything at all. Sure, the gun helped a little, but she could tell it wasn't having much sway here. Probably the least optimal starting location, with the most stressful possible scenario before her and ocean to her back, and that wouldn't be such an issue if Violet was a good swimmer, but honestly the water just made her feel really strange and she didn't want to go anywhere inside it. Ideally, one of her friends would appear next—someone she knew she could trust, like Dolly, or someone she knew from personal experience would not hurt anyone—and help bail her out of the situation.

The shakes were coming in less frequently now. Her aim, now flicking between Dante and The Floor Person, was getting a little more steady. However, her state of mind was doing the opposite—It was getting harder to keep it together internally, with the introduction of more and more and more variables. Violet sucked at coding.

"I don't know who you are, so please come out from under the stairs, or I'll, I'll pull the trigger!"

[Latin For Dragula]

"No."

Why had they involved themself?

"Am comfortable."

Dante would be fine. if this girl was going to shoot him, she would have shot him. Instead she was being rude, making demands as if she had some sort of authority here. Well, she had a gun from the sounds of it, but that hardly counted unless she was going to use it. They should refuse to cooperate any further and try to avoid antagonizing her.

"Dante dear, who am I telling to fuck off?"

A name made things much more personal, and since their communication had not been the best so far it was polite to ask Dante to intervene, no?

[Fenris]

Dammit.

"Could we not do this, maybe?" Dante's voice was weak and aimed at a random gap in the floorboards. Cause he was glad to see Blaise in that selfish sort of way, and they were a good friend, usually, but this wasn't really what he wanted to deal with in a life-or-death situation with a gun pointed at him? Call him crazy, but he didn't really wanna do anything that might piss off the girl with the big gun. No, wait, not piss off. She wasn't angry, she was just scared. He kept reminding himself cause it was a lot easier to deal with a scared person than a pissed off one, but there were similar conflict resolution strategies. Like "don't tell them to fuck off".

"Blaise, it's Violet? Schmidt? And do me like a big favor and don't tell her to fuck off? Everything's cool."

Well, no, it wasn't, but it could be, theoretically, at some point in the future, if Blaise stopped doing the thing that they were doing.

"Sorry," he called out to Violet. That's, uh, Blaise. They don't... do things you tell them to do, most times."

He shrugged without dropping his hands. Yeah, that's Blaise.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Violet was at a loss for words.

She wasn't being taken seriously! This was the opposite of how things were supposed to go and that had Violet really mad! She considered pulling the trigger to show Dante that she really meant business, but right now she didn't actually want to hit him. Violet just wanted to get out of there, find somewhere safer than all this open space. Maybe just crawl into the big boat and cry for a bit before she moved on, but she might get cut on some rusty metal and get tetanus or something. The shakes were almost gone, now, but they were still troubling her aim and her fingers. This standoff had dragged on for too long for her to not be somewhat calmed down by now.

Still, her gun was flicking from person to rough-location-of-person. If Blaise—that was their name, right?—was really under the dock, they wouldn't be able to see the gun anyways. This was really just a matter of Dante, and his not caring too much about the gun thing. Maybe giving up was the right thing to do, here. Violet closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, she was still alive. If there was a sniper on the hill, they'd have shot her. Heck, she had the sniper gun, here. What was that about not being in control? Violet had the leverage. She really needed to get her stuff in order.

"Fine," she said with a sigh.

Breathe in, breathe out.

She stopped thinking so hard about the gun, idly pointing it off in some direction while she let her hands go to where they felt like they'd naturally be, that kind of ring area around the trigger where it was probably fine to put her hands? Except it was sort of hard to tell, with this gun. Like, she really wasn't thinking about it, y'know, because why would she? She didn't want to fire it, so it wouldn't fire.






BANG!

[Latin For Dragula]

There was the crack of gunfire (presumably Violet's) followed by a sharp yelp (presumably Dante's) followed by a crash against the pier above (???). It sounded as if Violet were coming to sense, but she still attacked him.

Was it a ploy?

It wasn't a very good one.

Over Dante's pained sounds a long, exasperated sigh could be heard. "Was that necessary? Is it out of your system, or must you shoot him again?"

Oh, don't look at them like that. He'll be fine. Either she didn't mean to hit him or she was a terrible shot. The odds were in their favor either way.

[Fenris]

Hey, that sounded like a gunshot?

Then there was a noise that sounded awfully close by but he didn't think it could be him, because that would be weird, because he hadn't felt much, he didn't think, just maybe a sting for a second, maybe a mosquito had bitten him or something.

Then he was on the ground.

He didn't really know why that was, either. He was standing and then he wasn't standing. He looked at himself, took inventory, still had arms and legs and a torso and hands and feet and all that but also his jeans were getting pretty bloody and that hole in his left calf was new.

All of a sudden things hurt a whole hell of a lot.

He heard his own breathing, shallow and pained, and he heard Blaise say... something, but they sounded kinda far away. He felt his heartbeat in his ears.

This wasn't great.

"This isn't great," he said almost sheepishly, looking up at Violet. It had been an accident. She'd been trying to lower the gun, pulled the trigger by mistake, right? It wasn't her fault. Probably it was still his fault for bothering her. Thinking about whose fault it was wasn't making his leg stop bleeding.

Staring at it wasn't helping, either, but he found his body wasn't really responding when he told it to do helpful stuff, so he kept staring instead.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Oh.

It was loaded after all.

Violet stumbled back from the recoil on the gun. It stayed in her hands, but pointed off wildly into the sky. She started to shake again, but fought desperately to get it under control. She took her hand as far away as possible from anything that remotely looked like a trigger and pointed it down and away from anybody. Did this thing have a safety? She found something that looked roughly like it and engaged it, she hoped. Violet turned and stuffed the gun in her second duffel bag, next to her robe—there was more space for it in there—before turning back to look at the oh Jesus Christ that was a lot of blood.

She had gotten Dante right in the leg. Slinging both of her bags over both of her shoulders, Violet instinctively ran over to Dante's side. It was a screw-up, a bad, bad screw-up, and she could feel a tense pulsing in her throat, in her chest, between her ribs, strange rocks catching in her neck, a thrumming in her head, soreness, heaviness on every edge of her. Her eyes started to sting with the tears she tried desperately to hold back. It didn't get any better as she got closer. She put her hands to her mouth to keep her from smelling the blood, or from saying something really dumb.

"I,"

And then a new feeling wracked her, filling her from toe to head, a stiffness that kept her from getting any closer to him. A foot apart they were, and never closer could they get. She could not help him with his wound. Choked back sniffles and strained sobs began to intermittently emit from her mouth wrenched-closed. Was that a lot of blood? That was a lot of blood, right? But not too much? Would he live if she did something? She couldn't do anything? Why wasn't the stairs person helping? Weren't the two friends? Why did it fall on her to do anything? She couldn't do anything? This was her fault? It was all her fault? She couldn't do anything? She couldn't do anything? She couldn't do anything?

Violet stumbled to the left, and then to the right. If she stuck around much longer, she felt like she'd faint.

"I'm sorry," she began.

"I...I can't touc-help you."

She gulped.

"I didn't mean to hurt you. I swear."

[Latin For Dragula]

Once again, Blaise found themself the only competent person on premises. It was a terrible burden. If they moved, they were going to realize there was sand in all sorts of places they wouldn't care to imagine. That was a more solid motivator than their relative comfort, truth be told, but it was a little late to discuss such mechanics. Dante was helpless to stem his own bleeding and Violet sounded positively useless with her gagging platitudes.

In other words, business as usual in a more dramatic color scheme.

They pushed themself up with a groan and began to go through their own bag; they were certain they'd seen something that would be of assistance. As they did, they called out directions from below. "Get me his first aid kit. I want whatever passes for dressing and antiseptics." They would hear the oncoming creaking just a few moments later as Blaise appeared below the steps, a bag on each shoulder and a bottle of whiskey in their hands. "Don't worry. I'm an expert."

They were not.

They approached Dante clicking their tongue. "That is...something. I would be impressed were there any indication you knew what you're doing." They knelt down beside Dante and ran a hand through his hair. "It's not so terrible. Here, have some of this," they said as they offered the bottle towards his lips.