Survival Of The Fittest

((Kiera Hayes continued from i'll fly away))

Kiera was slumped over in an ancient armchair, struggling to catch a bit of sleep. Now that they had shelter in order, she could at least approach something resembling relaxation. With doors locked and no light or sound to draw attention, they were as safe as they could reasonably expect to be, for however long they had here until they were inevitably forced out.

Now the only real source of stress was Shu, who'd spent their whole time here bitterly seething over Greg's continued presence. She had no idea how to get him to drop it; with him initially being so open and intimate, she'd naively assumed he'd be like that for everyone, not just her. She refused to budge on keeping additional company near, regardless. Having a friendly-ish face around made things feel a little less warped and abnormal, and that was worth weathering Shu's grouchiness. He'd get over it, probably, she hoped.

She yawned, slipping further down into the chair and fully shutting her eyes. Even if he didn't, that was a problem for later.

((Greg Craig continued from i'll fly away.))

Greg paced back and forth in the living room, near the front door of the house. Every couple of laps or so, he glanced through a window facing deeper into town, looking for any sudden moving shapes that might have been classmates who were cold and lost and alone and in need of shelter.

Creak, creak, creak, creak.

He had to keep himself moving.

He wiggled his fingers. He wiggled his toes.

He had to keep the blood circulation going.

Creak, creak, creak, creak.

The past few hours had remained mostly uneventful. Things were quiet inside, and nobody else had walked past outside. There weren't any new footprints in the snow that he could see.

There were two sets of them coming from the trees over yonder, to just outside the house, then further into town, and then back to the house. Greg knew those were Kiera and Shu's footprints, obviously. But, there was also a third set of tracks, which were following the road out of town (or maybe into town, Greg couldn't see what direction the feet were going in from here). They must have passed by before he was awake, he thought. That was too bad. He hoped whoever they belonged to was doing okay.

There had been a big CRACK sound from deeper in town, maybe an hour or two or three ago. It sounded like a musket.

He hoped... he hoped it wasn't a sign of things to come. He hoped his classmates weren't already throwing their civility away.

He was worried about it.

Creak, creak, creak, creak.

Kiera and Shu had been keeping to themselves, mostly. Shu especially. The other boy hadn't directly spoken to Greg at all -- the only reason why Greg even knew his name was because Kiera had mentioned it. He seemed like he was a little bit of a grump, which Greg was willing to excuse, since grumpiness seemed like a perfectly reasonable reaction to being kidnapped by terrorists. Kiera seemed friendlier, though. She'd struck up some small talk and stuff. There was kind of a perfunctory warmth Greg sensed from her; like she felt she had an obligation to make him feel like he wasn't a third wheel. And that was nice of her -- Greg appreciated the thought, you know -- but he was okay. He understood why, in this situation, a person wouldn't feel comfortable being around someone they didn't know. A lone stranger was pretty much a wildcard.

Luckily, Greg wasn't a very wild and crazy guy.

Creak, creak, creak, creak.

He wasn't sure if Kiera or Shu were armed.

He definitely knew they didn't know he was technically armed (he knew because he hadn't told them).

It was kind of like a mutual trust fall. "I'll trust you not to kill me if you have a weapon which you haven't disclosed yet, and you'll trust me not to kill you with a weapon I haven't disclosed yet."

Something like that.

Creak, creak, creak, creak.

He took his routine glance out through the window.

"I think the sun's already starting to go down," he quietly said to no one specific.

((Shu also continued from i'll fly away))

"What about it? Something special about it?" Shu grumbled to no one specific, breaking his vow of silence. He stayed slouched in the other armchair across the couch from Kiera, picking at his nails. His eyes glared up from his perch.

It had been a few hours now since Shu and Kiera holed up with Greg here, though it was hard to guesstimate without a watch. Also didn't help that winter daylight was such a precious commodity and completely corrupted your perception of time. Though Shu never really minded the darkness; it was hard for your prey to find you before it was too late.

Just a joke to lighten the mood. Greg sure wasn't doing a good job of it; Shu was going to drive a nail through his foot if he didn't stop squirming. It was exhausting just watching him, but Shu had to keep watching. He was problematic. He was planning something. "Nice guys" like that always were. Kiera was already Shu's. But as much as Shu wanted to tell him to buzz off, he couldn't. Kiera still seemed upset about Marion. Doing the same to Greg would drive her away.

But he couldn't take it anymore. Greg never left them alone for more than a few minutes. Like he was watching them. Watching them for whatever bit part he needed for his devious machinations. But Shu knew better than to accept his pleasantries, Kiera be damned. But Shu couldn't say anything. He couldn't do anything but go along with it.

But whether out of boredom or from reaching a breaking point, Shu had enough. And enough was enough.

"Ahaha. No, nothing special." Craig said. "Just, it'll be getting colder soon."

Creak, creak, creak, creak.

"How good are you at building campfires, Shu? We might need to do a little something with the fireplace later if we get too chilly in here."

"We're good as is."

Shu kept picking under his ring fingernail, but there was still one stubborn black spot of dirt that wouldn't get out.

"Would you stop wandering around? Making me exhausted."

"Ahahaha," Greg said, from social obligation to respond to what he thought was a joke.

Creak, creak, creak, creeeeeeeak-

He took his regular glance out the window, down the rows of slumped and sloughing houses that led deeper into the town.

He stopped in his tracks.

There was something there in the distance. A tallish, dark shape standing in the snow outside a bright red house.

He squinted.

It was too far away for him to really make out who it was (if he had to give an exact distance, he'd guess it was about... twelve to thirteen school busses), but they looked like they were bending forward to pick something up off the ground.

Silently, he leaned his face closer to the window's cold glass. His eyebrows kneaded.

A huff reverberated through the living room. Shu's fingernails stopped moving as his mouth remained stuck in a frown, his eyebrows furrowed.

"All right, dude, just gonna ask this once. What's your angle? What are you planning?"

"..."

...

Uh...

The hair on the back of Greg's neck bristled.

He felt like he'd missed... something? He hadn't been expecting the swerve.

His eyes remained glued to the shape in the distance.

He wasn't sure how to respond. He hadn't really ever had to deal with... any kind of conflict, really, but especially being falsely aggressively passive-aggressively accused of having vague devious machinations. Maybe once or twice when he was really young, like... this one time in summer camp, while everyone was getting changed after going swimming, another boy went and and accused Greg of having gone through his backpack, stealing his swimming towel, and replacing it with his own swimming towel. And the boy was lying. Maybe he'd just thought Greg would be a good bullying target, Greg didn't know, it wasn't his place to ascribe a motive to the boy's actions. But, what Greg did know was that the towel the boy was saying wasn't Greg's was in fact one Greg had been using ever since swimming lessons, and the one the boy was saying was Greg's was Spongebob-themed. And so Greg just stood there and said, in a very calm voice, "that's not my towel, I don't even like Spongebob.", and then the counselor said "We'll deal with this tomorrow.", and then Greg's parents came and picked him up from camp early that afternoon because they were surprising him with a trip to Disneyland. But it wasn't something he'd dealt with in recent memory.

He turned his head and glanced backwards over his shoulder to where Shu was sitting.

He shrugged.

"No angle," he said.

He turned his head back to the window.

The shape in the distance was gone.

"I think I just saw somebody."

Another scoff.

"Maybe you should go out there if they're so interesting."

Another smirk.

"I'm detecting some hostility here, Shu." Greg said, not glancing away from the window.

"Yeah, and I'm detecting a lot of bullshit, Greg." Shu's voice was raised ever so slight.

"Shu."

Kiera was wide awake, looking deeply irritated and unimpressed with Shu. She turned to Greg, her expression softening just a bit.

"Greg, honey... mind giving us a moment alone?" She smiled, trying to mask how annoyed she was. "Maybe check out that thing you saw?"

Hopefully that'd keep him busy for a bit. She needed a word with her boyfriend, and she needed it alone.

Greg took a breath out, fogging up the window a little.

He glanced over his shoulder again and gave the rest of the room a quick nod.

"Yyyeah, no problem," He said, a bit of vocal fry hanging on to the 'y' in 'yeah'. "I'll go check it out, maybe see if I can bring them over. I'll, uh, I'll give you guys some space for a few minutes."

Creak, creak, creak, over to the front door.

"I'll give you a shout when we're back."

He dragged it open, and slipped outside into the breeze's cold bite.

He looked to his left. He looked to his right. Then, he gave a wave in the direction of the mysterious figure he'd seen. He turned around and dragged the house's door closed.

He crossed his arms, shivered, and then began to slowly crunch away into the distance through the snow.

Shu's eyes trailed Greg as he ran away. Good riddance.

He dropped his smug grin when his eyes panned over to Kiera. He folded his hands and rubbed the palms together slowly, back and forth and back and forth.

"...Have a good nap?"

Kiera stared right through Shu, her expression severe.

"What's your damn problem, Shu?"