Survival Of The Fittest

((Alex Avanesian continued from ooh wee a dead body))

Alex didn't really understand it. He couldn't find anybody. He'd searched around the complex from dawn til dusk, and he hadn't found anybody. Well, he'd found bodies, but not live ones. Nothing seemed to be alive in this place except him, and at some point he'd grown tired - both literally and figuratively - and taken a nap. Only a short one, but once he got back to his hunting, Alex was alive and refreshed. He'd made his way to a part of the complex he hadn't checked, this recreational building, and swept the building.

Was everyone in the town? It did seem like a better place to spend the night, with actual houses and beds and doors that you could lock or barricade, assuming Danya and his team hadn't taken the liberty of removing all of the locks. Dad had taught him, while they were trying to hunt, that you had to think how your prey would think. Staying near water sources, not treading too far from your young and fleeing at the sight of adversity.

It didn't match up one-to-one, but you could apply it to hunting humans. Replace 'water sources' with safe places, replace 'young' with friends and... yeah, don't replace the last part. That was true of all prey, really. It felt weird thinking of people that way, but he'd seen this all play out seven times before. Those who kill make it out alive, while those unwilling to kill fall to those who can. It always surprised people, the depths you could go to to survive. Alex had to admit, he didn't expect some people's names to be on the board.

But that was Survival of the Fittest for you. It revealed who you really were.

Sighing and slouching back against the couch, Alex glanced around the room. There'd been a scuffle here, that much he could tell. Shattered glass from the television, a bunch of weird tape all around. Nobody had died, though. No blood. Keeping an eye on the entrance, he felt up to his teeth, his nose, an act he kept doing. Tully had done some damage to him, that was clear. But he couldn't kill him. Fitz had poorly aimed, and Alex lived another day.

If only Fitz had been quiet and handed the rifle over. Nobody had to die. Alex was lenient because he was a friend, trying to learn from what he'd done to Evie. It hadn't sat right with him at first, but it was clear now that there wasn't room for mercy and that he'd done the right thing attacking her. There were no friends on this island.

Just you and everyone else.

Anyone who claimed to be a friend was an enemy.

At some point, Alex decided that looking around for more people wouldn't be worth it. It was late, and while they had the flashlights, he'd need both of his hands for a good grip on the spear. He kept flashing back to Evie, how he'd just slipped a little, how the spear's blade had carefully pirouetted through her clothes and given it just enough drag to prevent a fatal wound. Then the situation in the research lab, how he'd barely made it out of there alive and even then, he'd been hurt.

It was frustrating. Alex knew how this game worked, he knew how to play it, and so it was just so... humiliating that he was getting beaten by people who'd never so much as looked at a second of footage in their life, had never even thought about SOTF before. They'd never seen how it was done. It was so irrational, because every big killer was one that took attention away from him. People would care more about Kitty than they would Alex. But there was still that little frustrated voice complaining that he should be the big killer, he should be the one winning BKAs and getting kills.

Now soundly frustrated, Alex blocked the door off with the couch and went to bed. If he was going to start killing people properly tomorrow, he was gonna need to wake up bright and early. Maybe try and catch people while they were groggy, still waking up from Danya's announcements. A flash of the spear and a throat or chest and one more on the list.

When he did wake, it was a few minutes before Danya's announcement. Alex barely had enough time himself to get awake, alert and ready for the day before the dulcet tones announcing who was unlucky and who was lucky the previous day filled the room.

What he heard immediately ruined his day. Fitz had more kills than him.

Fitz.

What, did he actually hit the person he was aiming for this time?

Kitty had two more kills. The little waifish girl who cried if someone shouted at her or spoke to her loudly enough had four more kills than him. He was falling behind, and Alex still couldn't pin down what emotions that made him feel. Anxiety? Frustration? Hatred towards the people higher up on the list than him, the people who'd never done a damn thing in regards to Survival of the Fittest and then just fell right into playing like it was something they were born to do until someone better than them bumped them off?

Yeah, hatred seemed to fit the bill.

What remained of Alex's teeth ground together as the announcement finished, the frustrated hatred clouding up his brain refusing to make an orderly exit no matter how many times he told himself that kills didn't matter, that what mattered more was surviving and that getting kills was just a tool towards that goal. But the idea that the same people who'd mocked him, belittled him for finding an interest in SOTF were now sitting around killing people like they'd been born plugged into one of DataDude's hard drives filled with the camera feeds from V1 to V7 was just too annoying to sit and bear it.

Once he plunged his spear into the couch he'd been using as a bed and tore a gash in it like it was Cedar Dalisay's stomach, he felt a little better. At least, Alex could now convince the malignant emotions that they'd be better served for when he found somebody to vent this anger on rather than mutilating chairs and couches for no reason. It didn't serve a purpose, whereas killing people did. Supplies, weapons, BKAs.

If only they'd given him a gun. The guns had probably ended up with some little pussy who would rather swallow a bullet than use it on someone else, and here he was, someone who was willing to engage and play this game, with a shitty fucking spear.

Shoving the couch with a new hole in it out of the way, Alex stormed out.

He was going to do something today. He had to.

((Alex Avanesian continued in Spiralling into Oblivion))