Welcome to Camp Nightmare

[ViolentMedic]

((Russell ‘Fitz’ Fitzroy continued from spawn more overlords!))

They’d been making their slow way towards the research station – there had been a lot of gunshots coming from town. But the sun had started going down not long before they reached the campground.

Perpetually a little ahead of the other two, Fitz reached the log cabin first. He stopped and leaned in, ear against the door for a moment, then knocked on it and listened. Grip very tight on the rifle as he did so. Only when he continued to hear nothing did he nudge the door open.

“I think we’re good,” he said. “For now. ...Not warm, but it’s shelter, I guess.”

He shifted to the side of the doorway and waited for the other two, keeping the gun pointed away from them as he glanced about the area.

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

[Tenshi Marie Anastasie Fukushima-Yves continued from spawn more overlords!]

Tenshi huffed, as she strode through the doorway, still carrying that can of paint. Her arms hurt, almost as much as when they had to do volleyball in PE (but on the plus side, it hurt less acutely, so).

For whatever reason Fitz wanted to take it with them, and like, Trinity had been kind enough to offer so why not? Tenshi didn't know what harebrained plan he was gonna use it for but she didn't care. She wasn't thinking of that while carrying it all this way, anyway, just focusing on carrying it and not spilling it over her nice winter coat (she'd shut the lid tight once she picked it up so that it would stop pouring out and wiped the still-wet stains with the spare, kinda cheap looking spare windbreaker), all so that Cedar didn't have to. Tenshi might be a prissy princess who couldn't hear for shit anymore but she was useful dammit!

And as she crossed the finish line, a big smile came across her face. She had not spilled a single drop of paint on her clothes! In triumph, she plopped the can right on the floor-

-and with a jolt, the lid popped open and tilted. In panic, Tenshi shot her hands down to stabilize it, but it was already too late. And to boot, the turquoise paint that was about to spill on the floor spilled on her sleeves, right on her wrist cuffs, instead.

Tenshi stepped back from the paint can, and stared at the forearms of her formerly pristine white winter coat. It would have probably been a bitch to get out even back home (not that Tenshi knew much about laundry), but here? Now her beautiful jacket was gonna be stained with turquoise forever!

It might beat the alternative on this island, but that didn't mean Tenshi couldn't still get mad about it.

She looked up and stared at her other two companions, her lips pressed into a line as if to stop herself from screaming in frustration.

[Cicada]

She would have offered to help with the paint can, but even in less lean times that would have been a bad idea. Part and package of being sickly and weak was lacking the stamina to build stamina. Negative feedback loop.

- Cedar Dalisay cont. -

"Warm's probably a luxury at this point. I'm scared how used I am to the cold now, but like... at least I still feel cold? If any of us start feeling warm I hear that's really bad." Theory meeting reality again, as usual. Cedar had lived a privileged life of constant health scares, the tutorial to the brief and unsatisfying game they'd be grinding without pause for the next few days.

A sigh, soundless, without lips moving. Too cold to partition. She was slipping, she'd forgotten to include Tenshi in the one sentence's worth of conversation. She turned around. The paint can made a noise like a horror movie chord. Paint jumpscare.

"Tenshi!"

Wait, she couldn't hear that. Tenshi looked up in time to see Cedar stare at her with shock. Eyes wide, then hands halfway up to reaching out. A highly communicative message of solidarity, to be sure.

<SORRY>

Fixes sprung to mind. Dishsoap, warm water, a washing machine. No access to any of those things. Cedar's words died in her mouth, which was probably useful since they'd be useless for her understandably upset friend. Cedar shook her head in apology.

<GIVE--MINE--BUT--YOU--DON'T--LIKE>

[ViolentMedic]

“Right?” Fitz agreed, gazing out at the campground while the other two headed in past him. “It’s like… if you feel the opposite of how you should, that’s not good, right? Cold in the heat, hot in the cold—JESUS!”

Fitz cut himself off at the sound of the paint cans, gun half-up again. This time, his hands were nowhere near the trigger and he only briefly inched the gun towards the inside of the cabin before stopping and ensuring it was pointed out at the snow again.

“Oh… right, the paint, uh...” Fitz scratched the back of his neck. “Sorry to make you carry that so far, I didn’t think we’d be walking this far—oh.” He shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead and muttered, “You can’t hear me. Uh, Cedar, tell her I’m sorry for making her carry that. ...And that I think the colour’s nice on her or something?”

He glanced back out at the campground, then shut the door and faced the inside of the cabin. There was a table with moss growing on it, some chairs… a bed that looked mossier than the ground. Fitz drummed his fingers on the sniper rifle for a moment, then unloaded it and stuck the clip in his pocket before he placed the unloaded gun on the table. His hands lingered over it for a moment, his eyes flickering back to the two girls, before he stepped away for the moment.

“We should, uh… see how secure we can make this place, maybe. Uh, maybe look for something we can write on, though...” Fitz wrinkled his nose. “Place looks darn bare except for all these fuzzy little friends. But… even a surface and the paint might do it, in a pinch… Should get all secure, though, and then, uh… rest and, uh... talk about… all this.”

With that, he went around peering out the windows. Checking the view.

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

Tenshi could see Cedar and Fitz's reactions, and she knew that they were making noise. But as usual, the actual audio was pockmarked and full of holes, to the point of functional uselessness. The first bit of conversation Tenshi could understand, also as usual, came from Cedar. She pondered for a moment, how to express her reply.

She settled on <<DON'T--SORRY>>. It wasn't Cedar's fault she couldn't carry things very far, and it wasn't Cedar's fault Tenshi spilled the paint.

Then, she exhaled through the nose, with a slight smile on her face. It was nice to be reminded of something as familiar as hating on jackets.

<<FINE>>, she signed. She raised her arms so that her paint-coated forearm-sleeves were facing Cedar, and she waved them a bit, to indicate the subject of her next sentence. <<STILL--WARM>>. The sign for WARM looked almost like condensed breath spreading from the mouth, which is how Tenshi remembered it.

Her gaze followed Fitz as he spoke, though she could only catch fragments of his words. She'd always been terrible at lip reading, even when her hearing was better, even when there was less worry at the back of her mind distracting her. Something about a cure? She glanced over at Cedar, hoping for clarification.

[Cicada]

<SORRY> And Cedar pointed aggressively at her boyfriend- definitely still her significant other even in times of unfathomable crisis- to indicate what she couldn't remember how to with the actual contour of her hands. Tenshi hadn't asked for a Cedar apology but given her vague animosity towards Cedar's general taste in men she'd probably appreciate, however bitterly, a show of respect from one of said dude boy guys.

Cedar felt the scramble in her mind, the lobes of her brain doing their best cosplay (no glomp!) of what Cedar imagined cell phones felt like when they were being jammed. There was a lot to translate: Fitz said things, Cedar had to think of the signs, Tenshi said things, Cedar had to remember what they meant and then also for some reason had to struggle to remember the English that went with the concept being signed. Tenshi smiled a bit, perhaps begrudgingly; where Fitz put the gun and what it implied about how safe he felt in their new temporary shelter (a permanent one hopefully having more in the way of amenities like air that wasn't pretty much the same temperature as the outside). Body language also needed mental energy to translate. Cedar was running on fumes as was.

<HE--LIKES> and she pointed at the jacket sleeves that were now a fetching shade of absolutely terrible. Even Cedar's trash taste (Tenshi's words) in weeb shit could not compare.

She spared a moment to glance around as Fitz did, at all the windows. Just a moment. The dull ache in her temples that was dull in the same way a rusty and edgeless knife hurt and maimed far worse than a sharpened one, that ache reminded her that she needed two eyes to be attentive so nothing was lost in translation. She looked back to Tenshi, only having enough time to process that the outside looked gorgeous.

<MAKE> Make was a cute and active sign. Next one she didn't recall. <S--A--F--E> And Cedar pointed all around herself. The floor, the ceiling, the walls, all impassive to human misery. She belatedly realized that Fitz saw the windows as security weaknesses, not as portals to a winter wonderland.

Cedar took a deep breath. In as a gulp, out as a bone-wracking sigh. The sort that exhaled a bit of the marrow along with all of her frustration. She was. Tired. And she lugged herself into the nearest seat at a less than ideal pace.

[ViolentMedic]

Fitz rubbed his face, looking around the cabin and turning on the spot for a few moments, before he sighed and went, “All these windows give me the heebie-jeebies.” His eyes flickered back to Tenshi before he pointed at all the windows, then theatrically shuddered.

Not spotting anyone through the windows, he instead retreated back to the table. As he passed by her, he undid his brown, checkered scarf and wordlessly draped it over Cedar’s head.

When he reached the table, he rested his daypack on it. He opened the bag and started taking inventory of what he had. Bread. Crackers. Food bars. Water. He glanced at these, then at Cedar and Tenshi, then looked back at the food, clearly mouthing numbers and occasionally counting with his fingers.

“How much of this do you think you can eat, Cedar?” he asked once he’d finished counting. As he asked, he quickly packed the food back into his bag again, barring a bottle of water and one of the bars. Instead, now he removed the first aid kit and opened it to take inventory. As he did so, his fingers brushed the manual for the sniper rifle.

It had plenty of white space between the instructions and diagrams. Fitz considered it for a moment, then took it out and carefully frisbeed it towards the other two.

“...Also I’d read that. So you know how to use it, y’know?” he said slowly, holding his hands together and opening them like a book, then pointing at his eyes and downwards to the mimed book. “This a campground... so maybe there’s charcoal outside we can write with in the margins… I think paint’s gonna be too sticky for the small stuff.”

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

Wait, was Cedar apologizing for Fitz? About damn time. Wait, no, technically it'd be almost like... SORRY--HE? As in he's sorry? Anyway, she didn't ask for any apologies from anybody, so whatever. Or at least, she wasn't asking for apologies before, because Fitz said he liked Tenshi's horrible paint-stained coat sleeves? What a joke! She was tempted to stick her tongue out at him again, but like, it wasn't like Cedar needed reminding that Tenshi had never been friends with a single one of her boyfriends.

Cedar's translation of Fitz's words didn't have anything about a cure, just making the cabin safe. Tenshi nodded, even though she wasn't sure what that would entail. They had a gun so like, was the plan for Fitz to guard the area? Tenshi didn't like that plan, for personal reasons. Fitz being on guard had been hazardous to her health.

She let Cedar hobble off to get some much-needed rest, since walking and standing for so long had been more immediately hazardous to Cedar's health anyway. Which left her with Fitz's inelegant attempts at communicating with her. Windows, shuddering. But when Tenshi looked out the window, all she saw was a snowy landscape. It was kind of idyllic actually, maybe the ski resort would have been like this.

...Tenshi was really looking forward to the ski resort. Her parents weren't the type who liked skiing or cottaging, they usually went to a big city during their vacations, so this trip would have taken a new and exciting shape for her. She remembered visiting a cottage her dad's friend owned and how nice it was to curl up on a large sofa by a window and see the wind rustle as she worked in fits and bursts on her crocheted scarves.

Oh, yeah. She crocheted two scarves, only one of which she was wearing. She was planning on giving the other one to Cedar for Christmas, so they could have matching winter accessories. It would have been really cute, wouldn't it?

She turned back to Fitz and vocalized her opinions, since she didn't have the patience to try and play charades back at him. "What's scary about it? The view's nice."

It was pretty cold though, but maybe it'd warm up with enough time closed off from the outdoors. Fitz got out the food, and a pamphlet, but right now Tenshi was gazing out the window, wondering what could have been.

[Cicada]

Cedar as silently adjusted the extra bit of warmth that Fitz had thoughtfully dunked onto her head. Unironically, that was. The more cozy and casual an expression of affection, the better in her books. Made her feel awkward to be the center of attention... ho-hum. Cedar definitely stood out like a sore thumb- sore as in cancer ridden- being likely among the single least fit to survive contestants SOTF had ever 'hosted' as a 'contestant'. She was not happy about that, of course, but that particular grievance was quite low on her list of priorities. Speaking of:

"Food wise? ... It won't be pretty, most of these things probably trigger my IBS. But there's plenty of woodland for me to slowly hobble into if I have an episode."

She smiled ruefully, her gaze briefly evasive. She was disgusting and unsexy enough when her issues were easy to handle in a discrete way. Somehow she still cared about that. Also low on the priority list in theory, but visceral enough in how it made her unfathomably sad for what was lost that it was a surprise knife to the throat. It didn't matter up until it suddenly did.

Also, she didn't bother to translate that particular exchange for Tenshi. Sorry but, the less people rounded up into Cedars death march humiliation the better. She had her hands full enough with trying to understand the conversation as was so that she could proceed to make it even less comprehensible with her attempts to bridge the gap between two very different languages, two very differently built areas of her own brain.

She tossed one of the crackers on the table at Tenshi's shoulder to catch her attention. No sir, not getting out of this chair.

<SCARY? -- HE -- DIDN'T -- SAY>

[ViolentMedic]

"Puke wherever. Not like it'll be pretty for long," Fitz muttered.

Fitz lifted his head from looking over the first-aid supplies to stare blankly at Tenshi for a full ten seconds in response to her question. Then he glanced at the gun pamphlet, still untouched.

Instead of immediately verbally answering, he stood up and picked his rifle up again before he walked to the door into the cabin, leaving his supplies on the table. He opened it, left while closing the door behind him, and then stood outside the window closest to Cedar and Tenshi.

He raised one hand, made a finger gun, and pointed it at them.

"Bang. That's why," he said, voice muffled by the window but retaining its usual calmness. "I'm gonna scout the area, be right back. If I'm not back in five, assume I was decapitated because of the death game thing."

Then he vanished from the window without waiting for a reply, towards the nearby tents. Though his voice was calm, his feet were stomping a little louder than necessary, and he spend up quickly to put distance between himself and the other two.

The moment he reached one of the half-collapsed tents, he crouched behind it where the other two wouldn't be able to see him, at least through a cursory glance out the window. He rested his unloaded rifle in his lap, then pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes.

"Jesus," he whispered. "JesusjesusjesusJESUS." More strained with each repetition, though never getting higher in volume.

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

Tenshi made another noise as something hit her shoulder. She turned quickly, and her hands scrambled to catch the... saltine? She clutched it in her hands as she watched Cedar sign, and watched Fitz go outside and dramatically gesture through the window. It seemed Tenshi misread the situation again - now that he brought up guns it felt pretty glaringly obvious what he was concerned about.

Her eyes followed him as he went but only for a little while.

In fact, when she walked over to Cedar's seat, she decided the first thing she would say would not be asking what Fitz was doing. She had no interest in whatever he was gonna do, which was probably something stupid, and Tenshi was pretty sure he'd come back, kind of like a persistent wasp who really wanted your oranges and was willing to fight you behind the school (where Tenshi liked to have end-of-the-year beginning-of-summer picnics) for it.

She was still holding the cracker in her hand, as she took a chair from nearby, and dragged it across the floor to Cedar. Once she sat down, she opened her mouth to take a bite, then stopped herself.

<<I--CAN?>>, she signed, raising an eyebrow and tilting her head - for grammar's sake.

She didn't have to be told that most of the stuff here probably made one or another of Cedar's health issues act up. After all, Tenshi (tried to have) kept a list of foods Cedar couldn't eat. Its most tangible form was on her phone's notesapp, for updates on the fly, but whenever she knew Cedar would be coming over she transferred it onto an actual paper note which she passed to her mom, and her mom would hold onto it or pass it to whoever else would be cooking or ordering food that day. Unfortunately her information wasn't always up to date, and was sometimes even wrong, which felt... weirdly devastating? Like, "badly bungled a part in choir" levels of devastating.

[Cicada]

Wrong end of her digestive system, but Cedar also likely vomited more than the average human being in her day to day life so understandable mix up. Not this medical inconvenience that made her quality of life significantly worse, the other one. Ah, the number of classes she got to skip because she was busily voiding her guts in one direction or the other in her favorite stall (second story girl's bathroom towards the rear of the Admin wing, centrally located relative to most of her classes). Not at all worth it nor a recommended way of avoiding the American education system.

She had her concerns about how Fitz chose to show his concerns with their safety, many of them, acute. She almost immediately wanted to go after him, especially when she picked up on the subtle difference in the weight of his steps. Walking like he was about to spontaneously break into a 100m dash, then accelerating out of earshot. An extremely rare look for someone of his temperament, she'd come to appreciate how Fitz was made of Teflon when it came to stress, but. Everyone had their breaking point, and this island and all it represented was a dishware shop full of delicate things for the breaking.

Cedar still didn't have the energy to really muse on the multitude of other people she cared about, by name, face, her dour appraisal of how likely it was they'd snap under the pressure. Not the ones beyond these four rickety barely there walls. Trinity had already mostly vanished from mind. Cedar supposed she should feel guilty about that, but in a way it was a relief. Maybe there was no grief if there was no strength for the grieving.

Anyways, she was stuck here. Worrying enough about Fitz, fearing any little tickle of the winds fingers over the window panes because those tiny little noises could suddenly mutate into gunfire.

Oh, Tenshi was asking about if it were okay to eat in front of her. Super sweet. She definitely wouldn't have given a shit if it had been Fitz with the multiple digestive disorders.

A thumbs up. Cedar tried her best to keep the worry off her face, and she succeeded by default since her unfocused, nauseous look didn't really have the room for terror to seep through the cracks. She cradled her face with one hand, mouth angled so the hot air seeping out would be at least useful for maybe restoring circulation to her fingers before they rotted off.

Hard to talk like this, but Cedar could've used a moment of silence.

[ViolentMedic]

Eventually, Fitz lowered his hands from his eyes. He breathed, then slapped his face a few times before he looked around.

He glanced back, then forth, his eyes scanning the area but not lingering on anything in particular. Eventually, he looked straight ahead.

“You’re recording, aren’t you?” he said quietly. “Just because I can’t see it, doesn’t mean you aren’t. Be no point otherwise, huh?”

He paused, like he was waiting for an answer. Obviously there was none.

“...Gale?” he said slowly. “I shoulda listened. You’re not to blame for this. I hope you know that.” He removed the clip from his rifle and started to load the gun once more. “So, y’know… whatever happens, it ain’t on you. And that’s all I’m gonna say on that… so there’s no need to watch further.”

Rifle loaded, he straightened up and started wandering about the area. Prodding a tent with his foot here and there, touching one and checking what it was made out of. Scruffing the snow anywhere that was particularly empty to see if there was a fireplace underneath. Picking up random little items here and there. Veering in and out of view of the cabin, should anyone look outside.

He did this until he came across something that, unlike the rest of the campground, had clearly only been abandoned recently. A bag that matched the one he’d been assigned, though with the number S007 on it instead. And a backpack decorated with a skull and crossbones.

“...Huh,” Fitz said slowly.

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

Tenshi nodded, and nibbled the cracker. The point of eating slowly was to savour the food and really get into the nuances of the flavour but like... there was nothing deep here. It was just kinda salty, but also just not a lot, and it also wasn't fair. Tenshi wanted hot cocoa and macarons, and she wanted to have a delicious dinner to come back to in the evening.

If she chewed the cracker and imagined really hard while focusing on the profile of Cedar's exhausted face, she might be able to convince herself it was actually a macaron, or a shortbread cookie, or something or another as sweet as Cedar. She looked kinda terrible, but like, in the objective sense - in Tenshi's eye Cedar never actually looked that bad. She read in some book in middle school, one of the ones with the kinda wonky-whimsical illustrations, that you could have a crooked nose or bad teeth or whatever and if you were a kind, good person you'd still look lovely. That was what Cedar was like, she was pretty sure - she could have acne marks and look like she's about to pass out or throw up and be wearing the ugliest denim jacket ever and she'd still look lovely because she was lovely.

The sign for BEAUTIFUL was a gentle one, best paired with a soft smile. Tenshi raised her hand.

She put it back down almost immediately. It wasn't really a good time.

Would there ever be a good time?

Whatever, as much as Cedar would humbly accept the compliment outwardly, Tenshi's best friend probably needed a break from signing, the way Tenshi needed a break from hearing sometimes. She'd take off her hearing aids just to chill out for a bit without interruption, but she'd keep them nearby. Whenever she had to put them back at a moment's notice she'd be irritated, sure. She'd hide them under her hair, sure. But it was still really fucking rude of the terrorists to take away even the choice of using them from her.

She started humming, idly. It wasn't just random humming, it was one the humming exercises she did to warm up to sing. It was quiet (she hoped), less risky than actual full singing, but it was nice to know the terrorists couldn't take her voice away.

[Cicada]

Tenshi watching Cedar watching Tenshi. Familiar. If Tenshi had had them with her, her hearing aids would have been out, sitting on a nearby surface with Cedar shooting them the occasional uneasy look one did whenever thousands of dollars worth of a friend's livelihood was sitting out in the open.

Usually this amount of soft smile, no words needed eye contact came with the backdrop of some rather mid Vocaloid back track or the thumbtack click of Cedar's sewing machine. Usually this sort of moment happened when there was some form of central heating involved. It wasn't quite the same now, but... it was still heartening. Cedar had always guessed she was some sort of extrovert- cues from other people gave her the strength she needed to fight back against the limitations of her mortality.

Those particular asymptotes like walls now, hemming her in on all sides with the promise of dead friends and bullets through her spleen.

Tenshi had almost signed something, but backed off on it and chose to vocalize the moment some other way. Tenshi's voice matched her given name, if nothing else about Tenshi could be said to be particularly pleasant for a stranger to deal with, she had the sort of voice that could have soothed beasts and summoned cherubim from up high. If Cedar could have bottled Tenshi's voice she would have put it by her bedside as her lullaby. As it was, actually, Cedar did indeed have a few M4As of Tenshi's YouTube covers saved onto her phone in case of insomnia. The slower ballad ones, mind, faster Vocaloid songs were hellish on a slumbering mind.

Cedar's own voice was... meh. Passable in a choir type voice, the charitable way of telling someone they had no actual talent but they at least had bothered to learn. Her lips gently opened, her diaphragm, burning as it was by proximity to her now permanently taut and stressed intestinal walls, adopted a battle position. A soft alto matched Tenshi's wandering humming, mostly awkwardly missing a harmonic, but occasionally finding a sweet third or fifth through serendipity.

Cedar made clear what she was doing with a sign. << SING >> and pointing at her own throat after. The sign for signing was one she knew well- in the chaos of Platoon karaoke, she often had to draw Tenshi's attention to other people's turns with a violent application of ASL almost to the face.