Survival Of The Fittest

((No rest for the weary.))

Katelynne couldn't fall back asleep. She resigned to just stay at the beach, sitting on the duffel bag in the sand with her arms wrapped around her tucked-in legs and watching the sun rise from its own siesta and dye the sky blue.

She'd never been to the beach until this morning or even had much interest in going to one before. Like yeah, guess it was kinda purty or whatever, but what was different about it other than being a really extended swimming pool but with more salt and less pee? But being out here now, in that eerily sterile silence of early morning time… yeah, she kinda got it now.

Besides, ya know, all of the random shoes everywhere. Looking at them made her think back to the shoe tree, so she tried her best to just kinda ignore the randomjunk in her peripherals.

Katelynne yawned into her shoulder and rubbed her eyes, looking left and right and behind her before returning her gaze to the sea. Supposedly the bad guys were gonna check-in daily, whatever that meant. If what that boy said was true, then she was gonna have one more day to complete her tour. If not, then this nightmare might be over soon enough.

Either was fine.

[[Arjen Enter]]

Part of him wanted to free Marco, but he was not brave enough. Part of him wanted to shut up and not gotten into a verbal argument with Marco, but he was not calm enough.

Arjen slowly dragged his heavy sword along the beach, feeling tired and hungry. They had so many bags, now they had none.

Something moved out in the corner of Katelynne's peripherals. Rather, someone.

She sharply turned to look. Yep, over yonder another fella came to join in the beach party. This one looked like he was dressed in mostly black, somehow not already dying in this heat. Must've been one of those "goth" types. They were mighty queer people.

Moreover, though, he seemed to be all alone like a cub separated from its mama. No bags or nothing either, just dragging what looked like a huge medieval sword through the sand all dejected-like. Fella must've been having as great of a time as Katelynne was.

She watched him for a little more. As he trudged closer, she waved her hand at him with an awkward half-smile on her face.

((Garren Mortimer continued from They call me useless, they call me weak, they call me a flipper and snorkel geek))

Oh, right, that was why he hadn’t spent more than a couple hours outside for a few years now. Cause the great outdoors fucking sucked.

Garren had been camping once, and that had been more than enough to last him a freaking lifetime. You were three inches away from a bug at any given time, you were either too hot or too cold and always too cramped, and no matter the weather you somehow ended up damp. Camping sucked, and if you said otherwise, then you were probably totally insane.

At least then he’d had a tent. Now, on Hellfuck Island, when darkness had started to creep in and his legs were about to give way underneath him, all he’d had as any form of shelter was the closest tree to collapse beneath. It was real hard to sleep when every way he turned, there was something pressing into his side and, probably more pertinently, the persistent buzzing reminder that ‘hey, there’s dudes with guns and knives and chainsaws and fuckin’... 10 foot dildo clubs wandering around nearby’. Like one of those stupid alarm clocks outta a cartoon, that wouldn’t stop ringing no matter how many times you crushed it with a comically oversized hammer.

Eventually his body had just kinda gone ‘fuck it’, and it had clocked out all by itself, tumbling him down into a turbulent sleep, one so restless that a mix of birds chirping and a gnarled root digging into his ribs as he turned over caused him to instantly return to the world of the living. For a few beautiful moments, as he blinked his bleary eyes, adjusting to the steadily growing light, everything felt just fine and fuckin’ peachy. Then, all at once, seven tonnes of aches and pains hit him, and he groaned as he slowly, painstakingly rolled onto his back. It felt like every single one of his joints was brand new, and he was taking his skeleton for a spin whilst everything was still stiff and in need of breaking in. The left side of his body was covered with gravel, and with a look of disgust, he shook a cluster of ants off of his shoes as he clambered to his feet, feeling like some kinda papier mache man.

All things considered, it was gonna be a long day ahead of him. Odds were, every day would feel three times as long as normal.

Plenty of time, then, for him to shed his skin.

Garren felt himself smile, and a chuckle instinctively flowed from his lips. Thoughts that goddamned optimistic were a rarity in his headspace. There was probably something psychologically or philosophically messed up with feeling this good and positive in such a messed up and totally fucked situation, but y’know what, those dusty old bastards who’d analyse something like that could shove it for the moment. He’d found some little tiny of fragment of hope in this heaping mound of shit. They were just gonna have to let him have his happiness.

He started to head off, no great desire to issue his previous night’s bed any fond farewells, especially considering it was probably a minor miracle no would-be player had stumbled upon him sleeping right in the fucking open like that. He unzipped his bag to grab a water bottle as he walked, and he was midway through deciding whether to conserve it, or whether to chug half of it cause jesus fuck his throat felt like he’d swallowed half the Sahara, when, speak of the fucking devil, his foot hit sand, and he blinked, and realised he’d barely been paying attention to where he’d been walking.

Probably woulda been a good idea to grab the map along with the water bottle, huh, dipshit?

Luckily there wasn’t a half-naked Wyatt anywhere to be seen, sprinting at him and screaming bloody murder whilst waving somebody’s torn-off limb around his head. Didn’t seem to be anybody as far as Garren could see. Wait. No. There was a larger shape a few yards off, definitely a person but also definitely not Carter sized. Also a whole bunch of mismatched shoes, all across the beachfront. Sure! Why not? Whatever!

He started to move forwards, when another figure, still not a Carter but definitely more alarming than the first shape, stepped into view. More alarming because, uh, that was a huge fuck-off sword tracing a shaky line through the sand, wasn't it? They were moving slowly, and he couldn't help but notice the distinct lack of bags on their person, but still. Sword. Sword that wasn't in a museum or a photo online, or being held by some edgy fedora-wearing vapemaster on 4chan.

It would have been real easy to just take a glance at these people like they were an Xbox, turn 360 degrees, and walk away. But he couldn’t exactly turn over a new leaf if he was just gonna ignore everybody he met, could he? Couldn’t shake off the shackles that had bound him for so long if he didn’t make a second first impression, right? Couldn’t help others if he just left them alone to die, yeah?

If things went tits up, he still had the pickaroon, right at his side. Bettering himself didn’t mean dropping his guard.

“Hey!”

Garren called out to the two, then stopped, as he realised that, hey. How the fuck do you talk like a normal human being again? The only person he talked to in real life on the regular was Demetri. Almost everything he said was scripted, like he was trying to be a walking talking breathing greentext. Even conversations with his parents were kept brief, as he spouted short and generic responses to everything they asked him or tried to discuss with him.

His mind suddenly flashed back to the SOTF Memorial and the trip, and the conversation he’d had with Nona, and another smile, smaller and softer, drifted across his face.

“You, uh… how you guys holding up? And stuff?”

Katelynn. She smiled at him.

Arjen. He smiled back. Tiredly.

A voice. Behind his back. Arjen turned around, expected to get hit something. Expected to get shot. It was an insecure voice. It was Garren. Holding a bottle. Asking how they were doing.

Arj was tired. He stared at the bottle, swallowing his saliva.

"You. Roll the bottle over here."

Arjen raised his Flammenschwer up with what was left in his arms and pointed at the distant bottle Garren was holding.

Someone else appeared, calling out with a friendly if somewhat awkward greeting. Garren, with what looked like some sorta freaky-deaky axe. Now this guy, Katelynne definitely always tried to stay clear of. But now he looked (mostly) harmless; your priorities of the kinda people to avoid changed in this sort of situation, it seemed.

Katelynne returned a friendly "hello", still sitting on her perch. "We're just chill-"

Oh. Goth guy was threatening Garren for the water bottle he had. Peachy.

She looked at Garren with a "I'm not with him" look, and she remained seated. Hopefully this would diffuse itself.

Please diffuse itself.

((Quinn continued from Darkness closes in, haunting the hearts of men))

A familiar auburn-haired girl stood down on the beach.

"Hi there, Katelynne."

Crouched behind a dune on one knee, Quinn held her rifle to her shoulder, looking down the sights at the miniature grouping forming on the sand. One boy she didn't recognise, one that she unfortunately did. The sight of Garren was enough to dispel the slight smile that had curved her lips at the sight of Katelynne. He'd attempted to humiliate her, was the reason she'd spent months being mocked for the sake of pointless emotions towards a girl Quinn had liked the idea of more than the person.

Her fingers tightened their grip, but she kept the index clear of the trigger for the moment.

It seemed as if something was developing between the two boys. She could wait and see what happened. No need to play her hand. Yet.

He was a little more aware of who he was dealing with, now that his brain had properly started the whole ‘waking up’ process, and now that he was closer to the two of them. Only a little, though. Katelynn, he recognised because she was the typical ‘Horse Girl’ that every school had, but also the weird ‘Furby Girl’, something he really hoped wasn’t as fucking prevailent across America. Like, Jesus Christ, everyone needed a hobby and shit, but Furbies were fucking creepy as balls. It had worked out in her favour though; despite being a prime target for insults and jibes, Garren had kinda unspokenly decided he didn’t wanna mess with her in case he caught some sorta Furby rabies. Seemed friendly enough here, though. Gave him a wave and a ‘hello’ and all.

The other guy, Arjen, Garren knew even less about, except for the fact that he wore the all-black ensemble he had on all the time, and Jesus Christ, that had to suck in this sorta weather. Dude was probably sweating balls right now, and that wasn’t even getting into the massive fuck-off blade he was dragging along behind him. The thing looked pretty intense, even though the blade looked kinda like when you left a plastic lid in the microwave for too long, aaaaaaaaaand…

Well. Now it was getting pointed at him. That was a new experience.

Garren instinctively took a step back, heart freezing solid, then kickstarting back into overdrive, as he tried desperately to think about any interactions he might have had with Arjen before. He couldn’t remember messing with the dude, or talking shit about him in class, or even calling him a cuck, which was pretty much the baseline for his interactions with other people in the class. Didn’t mean it hadn’t happened, though. Just meant it was real hard to think straight when there was a fucking sword pointed at you.

“Hey, hey, woah, jeez, easy, buddy! I’m cool, I’m cool!”

He crouched down, maintaining eye contact with Arjen the whole time, resting his pickaroon on the sand next to his feet and rolling the half-empty water bottle towards the other boy. Slowly, he returned to a standing position, hands up, palms open. He shot a glance at Katelynne. Part of him wanted to call her out for not fucking doing anything. Most of him was smart enough to realise that dealing with some sword-wielding black knight fucker, like they were in Sword Art Online or something, wasn’t really a thing anyone here had planned for.

“You coulda just asked for it, y’know? That’s probably a-”

Foreign concept to an emo fuck like you almost tumbled out of his mouth. He bit his tongue just in time. Turning over a new leaf would be hard enough, he didn’t need to keep shoving the old leaves back into his pocket like he was scooping up his fucking spilled Yu-Gi-Oh cards.

“... Never mind. Sorry. Put the sword down, yeah? I’m not looking for trouble. First time for everything, I know.”

He tried to grin, but as it turned out, it was pretty hard to stop it looking fucking terrified when, again, there was a sword in close proximity.

Arjen immediately sticked his sword back into the sand again as the bottle rolled over. He bend over to pick it up. He drank the rest of the bottle in one go and tasted vitality.

"Thanks. I wasn't threatening you, by the way."

Garren interpreted it this way. He was the one who was paranoid. Arjen was not crazy, not evil. Though Arjen had to admit that there was an implication by weilding the sword. He had power. Arjen felt free at last. Something he had not experienced when being held captive by Marco and his machine gun. Fuck that guy, seriously.

Arjen calmly breathed.

Sweat was coming from his palms and he leaned his weight on the Flammenschwert. Arjen felt sorry for having stolen water from somebody else, at the same time he was still extremely pissed at this whole situation. The Marco situation as well, not freeing him. Maybe the guilt he had for leaving Marco behind and the guilt of robbing water mixed and it made him feel more miserable. It was necessary to save himself from Marco. He couldn't have freed him.

Arjen told to himself that Marco was fine and that someone else must've helped him upon the pityful sight, but Arjen did not believe what he told to himself.

Maybe Marco was dead because of him.

"I think I caused someone to die. I fucking killed someone. I'm not sure what to do. I really am not."

Then tears began flowing out of his eyes.

Help me

Ok, whew, Garren did just give up the water bottle like that. Katelynne sighed; she didn't know how much more drama she could take in a 24 hour period.

But for some reason, she didn't feel much relief. Dread suddenly hung over her.

Like she was being watched. By real human eyes, not just the cameras.

She looked left, right, back. But besides the other two boys, a bunch of shoes, the cameras, and a couple of sand dunes there was no one around. Maybe she was just being paranoid; she was usually even more loopy when sleep deprived.

Anyway. Speaking of loopy, new guy said something about killing someone before his eyes burst out into waterworks.

Katelynne stayed rooted to the duffel bag, exchanging another worried, awkward glance with Garren. But this time, she decided to get up and do something about this.

"Uhm...," she started, hands clasped together in front while shuffling closer to the crier but maintaining a good sword distance or two. "...You wanna talk about it?"

Angie's night in the wood wasn't particularly interesting. If anything, it made her hungry.

(Angie continued from here)

Her only real companion was her gun, and that's what she wanted. There weren't anyone else she wanted with her, other than her brother of course, because it was just a matter of time. Everyone had a time bomb inside of them, even her and even her loved ones, and nothing here restricted it. She knew better than to play with it.

The words of Marco echoed through her mind. She wanted to go back and tell him she wasn't riding no high horse. If she were, she would't have talked to him, she wouldn't have interacted with him, she would have ignored him and moved on with her life. Yet, Angelina talked to him. She should have said nothing. Her words didn't mean anything.

Angelina's choice to go for the beach was driven by nothing else than her wanting to find her brother. She assumed he would go there. She was wrong yet again. Angie saw Arjen. He was crying. She stepped out of the shadow, her hands on her rifle. Angie sighed and looked around the crowd.

"If you are talking about Marco, he's fine." Fine wasn't a word she would use to describe Marco normally, but he was alive, if that meant something to Arjen. "Anyways, hey guys."

The tensions dispersed as quickly as they'd came. Garren rolled something to the other boy; the light caught on shiny plastic and Quinn identified it as a water bottle. The other one put the sword down and drank. If that was a threat, it was as amicably resolved as anything Quinn had ever seen. Perhaps she'd misjudged the nature of the encounter? It wouldn't be the first time that she'd read a situation very differently from--she was about to call it 'the truth', but that had never felt more subjective. She settled on 'others'.

For instance, this wasn't exciting. Other than a light buzz which she ascribed to seeing Katelynne and thinking back to what she'd done earlier, Quinn's prevailing sensation was a mild discomfort from crouching in place with a relatively heavy weight on her back. Quinn could pull the trigger and send a bullet towards the people over there with less effort than tying her shoes, could kill someone with a twitch of the finger. And that was boring. Because it would be so easy? Maybe so. She was still sifting through her thoughts, matching up the intensity of the emotions that had bubbled up within her last night to the deed she'd done. The danger, sure, that'd excited her. So had the blood, so had stabbing Violet in the gut and feeling the vulnerable flesh give way.

The idea of ending Garren had crossed her mind more than once back at school. Quinn had pictured it; pushing him in front of a speeding car and watching him go sailing in a heap of broken bones. Sneaking one of her hobby knives into school and burying it in his smug, grinning face. Punching him square in the nose and his whole head just caving around her fist in a cartoonish spectacle fit for Mortal Kombat. Now that she was here, with the opportunity to shoot him dead? So quick, so clean, so dull.

Quinn kept Katelynne in the centre of her sights. She wasn't particularly surprised Katelynne had lived. Choking someone unconscious didn't mean they were dead, and most likely Quinn hadn't managed to completely cut off the air and or bloodflow anyway. This only mildly irked her; they'd shared such an experience together, after all, and Katelynne's continued survival only meant that there could be another opportunity for the same.

Not if Quinn shot her, though.

Someone else that Quinn didn't immediately recognise arrived, thankfully from enough of an angle Quinn was confident she hadn't been seen. Less thankfully, she was armed, making Quinn's rifle no longer the only one openly in play. Problematic.

Quinn let out a terse noise. This was no good at all. True, there'd never been any need to get involved in the first place, but she'd really been hoping that something could come of seeing this beach group. She couldn't even get enthusiastic about the idea of blowing Garren's idiot head off.

Petulantly, and without aiming more precisely than the group's general direction, Quinn fired off a shot.

Arjen hadn’t been threatening him, huh? Sure. And he was the Prince of fucking Tennis.

Garren couldn’t prevent himself from raising an eyebrow at the other boy’s comment. Either he was lying through his goddamn teeth, or he was a total fucking idiot. You point a sword, or a knife, or a particularly sharp stick at someone, that counts as a threat, dumbass. The implicit ‘do what I’m asking or I’ll run you through’. Literal toddlers could figure that one out.

He didn’t say any of that, again, though. The continued presence of the sword was only part of the reason, as well. That was two times in a row now he’d bitten his tongue and avoided falling into the same old pitfalls, sticking close to his metaphorical guns. Good job, Garren. Pat on the back for you. High fives all around. Cake will be distributed shortly.

But for all his internal bluster and snark, he could freely admit that the sense of relief that had washed over him was immense. The first real danger he’d encountered, not just the potential for threat that each new person he ran into possessed, and he’d managed to navigate it without harm. He flashed a reassured grin at Katelynn.

Almost instantly, because he was just the focal point of some shitty cosmic joke apparently, the smile got wiped off of his face, as Arjen started to break down in front of him. He took a step forwards, raising his hand in concern, mouth starting to open, before he froze, shrinking back into his previous position.

He wanted to help people, honest to God, really and truly he did. If he gained even a fraction of redemption for the bullshit he’d pulled at school, he would be happy. But his dumb ol’ brain, his archnemesis for the vast majority of his life, had kinda put it into his head that the path there would be, like… progressive. He’d start off with saying ‘hey’ to people, giving them all smiles and shit, then he’d move along to working with them, allying with them, making plans and shit with them and all that. Then he could try for the shit like… comforting someone scared, letting them know things would be okay, putting on his brave face when he was staring down danger.

But he’d just been thrown right into the deep end, and asked to deal with someone who might have killed a dude and who wasn’t handling it well at all, and hoo hoo boy, Garren didn’t have a fucking clue what to do here!

So. What could he say? What did you try and tell someone who was clearly distraught, but who also, y’know, just might be a fucking murderer? “Aww, that sucks! “? “That’s unlucky, bro.”? “Oh, well, don’t worry, just have a nice rest and a sit down and it’ll all be okay soon!”? Yeah that’d pan out fucking stunningly. Garren had the emotional support skills of a goddamn lobster, and even he knew that’d end up with him getting a smack round the back of the head from Katelynn, best case scenario. And no goddamn way was he gonna go and, like, pat Arjen’s shoulder, or hug him, or whatever. Not when he was this temperamental. Not when he had a sword still had arm’s reach.

Oh. Someone else was here on the scene. Angie… whatever. She was one of those dime-a-dozen girls around school that people on r/Incel ripped to shreds because they didn’t fuck them after holding a door open for them, the kind of girl that Garren felt obliged to spend every waking hour thinking up insults for. She probably forgot he existed five minutes after every encounter they had.

And now she was here, telling Arjen that the guy he thought was dead actually wasn’t, and that he didn’t have to worry anymore.

So, uh.

Yeah.

That wrapped that up before it had even started, huh?

Garren stood there awkwardly for a moment, before the piercing crack of a gun being fired slashed through the slowly deflating tension, bringing a new layer in its wake. Sand whipped into Garren’s face, even as he flinched and covered it, flinging himself to the deck. He frantically brushed at his eyes, spitting sand out of his mouth as he craned his neck upwards, searching half-blind for their attacker.

“Where are they?” he yelled. “Where are they shootin’ from?”

If you're talking about Marco.

H e i s f i n e

Marco sends his regards, motherfucker.

As Angie came and told her the message, he froze. As the gunshot echoed, he screamed. Then, Arjen stated the obvious.

"It's Marco! It's an ambush!"

How else could she know about Marco unless she had met and freed him?

This was it. Marco was alive. Marco was shooting at them. Marco was shooting at him.

Marco was hiding somewhere. Marco was going to fucking murder him. Marco was here and he was going to get vengeance for him not freeing him. This was Arjen's end.

Marco sent Angie. Angie was armed, too. Arjen was fucked in all ways possible. He let out another scream, more desperate than the previous one.

Arjen bolted. Back into the thickets. His biceps burnt from carrying the Flammenschwert with him. Tears dropping to the sand.

[[Arjen, Exit]]

Almost on cue another girl stepped out to the beach holding what looked like some sorta military rifle. She radiated no malice, simply directly telling the crying fellow that, no, Marco wasn't actually dead.

Wait, Marco? What the heck kinda shenanigans were going on on the other side of the island?

More importantly though, even with this forest spirit revealing herself, the questionable unease Katelynne felt was still ever present.

She got her answer in the form of a gun firing nearby and a bullet rushing past. Garren hit the deck and Katelynne did the same with a shriek, sand flying everywhere. She looked back up in time to see the sword guy scream about Marco and run off into the woods.

Whoever it was could've been anywhere: in the trees, on the beach, in the water. It didn't matter; only one thing did.

"We gotta get out of here!"