Survival Of The Fittest

On June 26th, 2003, the 57th annual NBA Draft occurred. Held at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, it was the first draft to be aired on ESPN after they acquired the license from another cable channel. The Cleveland Cavaliers won the draft lottery for the first pick. In the end, they selected an eighteen-year-old high-school athlete.

In a funny sort of coincidence, his parents never watched it. They hadn't ever planned to do so—they didn't even know it was the same day—but even if they had, there were bigger things on their mind. They had spent the day at the hospital anticipating the birth of their first and only child. Later, they would give him the name Donovan Lauer.

He grew up to be a fan of basketball.

On June 29th, 2021, the 75th annual NBA Draft occurred. Donovan Lauer watched it from an old TV monitor in their small apartment, eyes glued to the screen. Of course, he had no illusions about the outcome—they hadn't drafted a high schooler since 2006, they couldn't—but still, he wanted to dream. To see his name at the number-one spot.

He wouldn't.

On September 29th, 2021, Donovan Lauer sat at the table, hunched over, as he wrote letters—to colleges, scholarships, recruiters, anyone, everyone. He wasn't a good writer, but he tried, tried, tried so damn hard. Donovan Lauer wanted them to see what he saw, the potential, that he could be the next big something—that he was a somebody.

On October 29th, 2021, Donovan Lauer sat at the table, fidgeting anxiously. He didn't know when he would get the responses, but he hoped they'd come soon. The rest of his life, far as he could see, depended on the approval of these people—whose names he couldn't remember and whose faces he would never see.

On November 29th, 2021, Donovan Lauer sat at the table, staring at a pile of rejection letters. His parents weren't home—wouldn't be home for another few hours. In the end, nobody—not them, not the recruiters, not the scholarships—wanted anything to do with him. He was all on his own, and he didn't have a cent of savings to pay for college.

So much for dreams.

S043: DONOVAN LAUER — CONTINUED FROM "Zone Defense"

Donovan frowned at the thought. He didn't need this right now; the last thing he wanted on his mind were bitter memories. He shut his eyes tight—shut everything out— gritted his teeth, and then let them open again. The physical feeling, the stretch of his facial muscles, made it easier to block out all the mental nonsense and focus.

Two days ago now, the two of them—Donovan and Jenny—had arrived in the town. Since then, they'd spent their days searching the houses. Nothing. The only reward for their trouble was a bunch of moth-eaten clothes, and he'd had plenty of those already in his dresser back in the apartment—just more reminders of home.

Earlier that day, he'd changed his clothes, except for the hoodie and shoes, anyway—he didn't bring a closet on the trip. Nothing special. Just an old black long-sleeved shirt and some jeans and socks. Whatever. At least he'd had enough good sense to bring some cold-weather clothes, unlike the idiots who'd gotten themselves frozen to death.

Then, the two of them had set out to the mine. Maybe, just maybe, they'd be able to find something here. It was close enough to their shelter in the town that they didn't need to worry too much about getting lost—worst case scenario, and they got separated, the both of them still knew the way back to safety. Nobody would get left behind.

Donovan's hand was still on the gun, which was still in his pocket. The two of them had heard some shouts and loud sounds but hadn't met anyone since the encounter at the cabin. He wondered if that'd been the right choice, to leave—neither of those other two had ended up killed or as killers. Not yet, anyway—the jury was still out.

"Man, I'm getting sick of scavenging," he murmured as he stepped into a room labeled 'KONTOR.' The life of a vulture was easy—but damn, it was boring as hell. "Jen, if you hear anything, lemme know, okay?" It wasn't going to happen. Why would anyone want to go to some shithole like this? Besides them, anyway.

Then, as he cursed under his breath, Donovan started to rifle through cabinets.

(Jack Anderson ontinued from A Hot Spring in the Old Town Tonight))

He'd awoken in the town, to a nerve-wracking mess, in the church basement. Then there had been the ill-fated palm-reading...

...which had, fortunately, led to a nice dinner-and-a-swim (and, if he was being honest, probably a little bit of fan service for the viewers at home).

So as he made his way into the area around the mine, he was...well, he was tense, but his body was at least physically relaxed even if he wasn't mentally there. It might not have entirely made up for the two days of (basically) no sleep, but it had at least managed to help. Getting out of the water had sucked royally (he'd put off getting out as long as he could; if he could have, he probably would have stayed in there until...honestly, until his collar blew or whatever), but he'd managed to dry off, using a spare shirt as a towel. Bundled back up, he was down here...carefully entering, not sure what to expect, with Kaede...he hoped...still in tow.

(He might have gotten a little bit ahead of her, but unless he missed his guess she should be right behind him.)

Making his way into the facility, Jack was...well, as quiet as he could manage to be. There weren't too many others around...

How many are left, again? he thought.

He'd lost count of the announced deaths, and he had probably missed at least one announcement due to being asleep...

Getting blown up while asleep...could do worse...

He mused idly as he moved forward...and then he spotted...well, at least one other student. So, he froze, waiting for Kaede to catch up: He didn't want to deal with a fight solo. (He didn't want to deal with a fight, period, but he at least wanted to hope he had backup if punches flew or worse.)

Waiting...breathing as quietly as he could...this part, he decided, also sucked.

((Kaede Tsurumi continued from A Hot Spring in the Old Town Tonight))

Kaede didn't like this at all. More people were dying, but that was to be expected - was it wrong to say that? She could have sworn that there was a minimum number of kills per day, so her being alive meant that timer hadn't hit zero, so that was ... morbidly good? Bittersweet? She even had to admit the the spring had been nice, even if getting out was difficult.

Either way, she and Jack were now coming close to some big building, when Jack stopped suddenly. Kaede looked at the scene in front of Jack, really looked. And then she noticed the other guy, the one that wasn't Jack. So, as she reached Jack, she knelt down, out of instinct.

((Jennifer Farrow continued from Take One for the Team))

"Yeah, I gotcha!" Jennifer had yelled back.

Jenny had gone camping before. Outdoors stuff wasn't new to her, but no amount of camping would help her with actual scavenging in a life-or-death situation, so Jenny had to learn on the spot. Besides, raiding houses and other places was more for those urban explorers, and the most Jenny saw of them was from documentaries that she happened to watch at times. Figuring out what to look for, what to spot, all this stuff had to be learnt via training, but she could do that.

Jenny gripped her spear, and began searching out an area just further off from Donovan. She kept an eye out sometimes, but she wasn't trained in military school. Sometimes she needed to focus on searching, so when she did, she kept her spear close and really focused, just like her father taught her to. Keeping your eye on the prize.

Donovan opened the first cabinet: there was nothing inside. Then, the second: also nothing. Then, the third: nothing. And so on, continued until the whole damn thing was thrown open and searched. Then, he moved on to the next one, then the next one, and the next one after that.

Nothing but a ton of useless junk—just garbage, wasn't worth shoving into his bag. From his point of view, it felt like everything had been picked clean. The terrorists must've gotten to it before anyone else—to deprive them of anything they could use. It was pretty selfish, honestly.

"Nothing over here," he said. "You'd think they'd leave some loot for us to scavenge, or squabble over, or something, at the very least, but there's just a bunch of fucking garbage." He grumbled something under his breath and shoved both hands in his jacket's pockets.

"It's bullshit," he grumbled. Then, he breathed in and let out a long sigh. The air was thick and heavy, and the smell of rust was suffocating. The room was small, and he wanted, at that moment, to move. "Hey, Jen," he called, "I'm gonna go and take a quick walk, alright?"

"I need some fresh air," he thought. "This place is stuffy as hell."

Then, he paused—as if something had caught his attention. It lasted only a moment before he shrugged it off and continued. "Just to check things out, you know? It'll only take a second." And, with that, he began to move, a slow gait, towards an open door, one step after another.

Jack also knelt down...more following Kaede's lead than anything, really...as Donovan turned.

Did he see us? he wondered. On the bright side, from what he'd been able to make out, Donovan was "just" scavenging, so there was that. All Jack had was...pepper spray. And a sturdy stick he'd picked up on the way down.

Then, Donovan began making his way towards the door. Towards them.

Okay, deep breath...he's seen us. Or close enough to it.

Beat.

Well, here goes. Run? Talk? Fight?

Another beat, and Jack stood up...slowly...slipping the pepper spray canister out of his pocket...

No point in playing the world's worst game of Hide and Seek...

...and raised his pepper spray, guessing it might be more of a disabling thing than clubbing Donovan over the head. If he had to, he could turn to clubbing later. With a finger on the trigger of the can, he did his best not to breathe...and waited for Donovan (likely) to get into range.

She noticed one of them, a guy, come forward. Jack took his canister out of his pocket and held it at the ready.

What was he doing? That was a question that was relevant to both Jack and the other guy. Either way, Kaede had no idea what Jack was going for or why, but it seemed like they were committed.

Kaede went forward into a run towards the other boy.

It happened so fast.

She didn't even see him at first. It was by chance, really. Jennifer turned back, and then she saw someone she didn't know, standing up, running towards Donovan.

"HEY!" Jenny suddenly gripped her spear, pointing it at the girl and shouting because that was the first instinctual thing she could do. She didn't even notice the other boy with the pepper spray, being surprised by the girl instead.

One moment, his world was an island. His world was a gun and a girl at his side, a bunch of office buildings, moth-eaten papers in dust-covered filing cabinets, a fallen-in roof and stagnant air, the four metal walls, and the rust that coated them. His world was an island in the center of the ocean, many miles from home, where nobody could hear them scream.

The next, his world was blinding, searing pain, and the hiss of a bottle. His world was hot, hot, burning hot, as if someone had taken a lighter and a bunch of gasoline and set him on fire. Like he'd ended up in Hell and stumbled right into the infernos head-first. His world was pain and rage and fear and a million other things he barely had the chance to feel.

"What the fu—" Donovan said, his sentence cut short like someone had taken a pair of scissors to a screenplay. Then, he screamed, screamed, screamed, with all the power his voice could muster until his lungs hurt and he couldn't cry anymore. His hands darted blindly to his pocket, searched until they felt the familiar grip of the pistol, and pulled it out.

There was no time to feel. There was no time to think.

His cries of hurt and fear got drowned out by three successive shots—bang, bang, bang!—of his pistol, a triplet flow of lead aimed somewhere, anywhere that would make it stop. Then, he fell to his back and scampered backward, blindly thrusting his feet and left hand against the floor to try and push himself away from the danger, towards solace.

Jack got the shot of spray in...about where he planned, as far as he could tell. He hadn't sprayed blindly, but there'd always been a chance that Donovan would duck or turn or something. But there was screaming, so that meant he'd -

BANG!

Jack hit the deck as the first shot went off, just about deafened by the sound at a close, enclosed range...

BANG! BANG!

...and his ears were quickly ringing as Donovan's two additional shots went wide of...anybody...instead kicking up a mess of dust as they hit...well, they hit something eventually. He found himself gripping his ears in response to the (highly unexpected and quite effectively deafening) barrage of bangs.

"What the fuck?" Jack asked...and then realized he didn't hear himself say it.

"Kaede? Can you hear me?" he asked.

"And who - " Jack started again, unable to hear his voice for now.

Ah, fuck. If I move quickly I can probably take him out if I want to. Get his gun. But...do I?

Taking a deep breath, Jack stepped forward...pepper spray at the ready...but also doing his best not to end up in Donovan's line of fire. Looking at Jenny, he sized up the situation.

"I think I can probably spray you before you get his gun..."

And I might be able to close to within your spear range, and I don't recall that you were in the SCA or anything, so I probably have an edge there right now...

"...so let's talk?" he offered...his voice perhaps a bit louder than would have been necessary, but also enough to cut through what he suspected was a collectively shared ringing in everybody's ears or partial deafness from the shots being fired.

Kaede hit the floor. After the shock of the moment wore off, she didn't seem to feel any pain. That meant that she probably hadn't been hit.

Well, that was a lie. Her ears hurt quite a bit, and they were still ringing.

"Kaede, can you hear me?" just barely registered from Jack. Kaede could only raise one arm in a thumbs-up gesture. Not because of any inability to move the rest of her body, but more to make sure that she didn't actually get hit by anything, since her other arm had what could generously be known as a "death grip" on her own head.

"FUCK!" Jennifer unintentionally shouted. She kept her grip on the spear, and she could barely hear the boy trying to talk to her, but she heard him nonetheless.

She focused hard, there were two of them. Were they trying to kill Donovan? They just went for him and attacked him, but... did he say he wanted to talk?

She had a spear, but even if she could maybe take one person, two was risky, and Donovan was too stunned to help, so...

"...Talk? About what exactly!? You jumped us!" Jenny said, mostly shouting because she couldn't hear herself.

And then the wildfire spread—from Donovan's eyes to his nose, to his mouth, all the way down to his lungs. Everything burned. He couldn't scream right anymore; fuck, he couldn't even breathe right anymore! Now, he was hyperventilating, the oxygen just out of his reach, and it was impossible to tell if it was from the fire or the fear.

"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit," he thought, mind still a blur, "It hurts!"

Still blind, eyes shut tighter than a bank vault, he could hear the scuffle in the distance. After the broadside, his attacker—attackers? Was there more than one?—hit the deck with a loud thump. He heard Jenny's shout in the distance and knew she had his six. Then, a familiar voice called out to him, Jack, from the track team. He wanted to talk to them.

He thought he knew Jack well enough; they were on the track team together. Even if the other boy had only been the manager—rather than an actual player—he'd thought that meant something. It meant that you were part of the team. It meant that you were one of them. And, thinking about it, track and field, to be fair, wasn't exactly a team sport...

...but you were still supposed to be on the team.

In theory, Donovan liked teamwork. He liked being part of a team when it suited him—when his teammates could keep up and keep pace, when first place was something they could reach for and take for themselves. But in practice, the moment the rest of the team fell behind, to him, it was every man, woman, and child for themselves, no mercy.

Only the finish line mattered.

"You—Jack, you maced me," Donovan sputtered, still unable to believe it. "You fucking maced me!" His left hand fell from the gun and darted to his eyes as if to check that they were still there. "What the fuck, man? Why did you do that?" He coughed hard, suppressed tears in his eyelids, and phlegm caught in his throat. "Fucking—answer, goddamit!"

"What the fuck, man? Why did you do that?"

Jack started to respond - two or three times, actually - but Donovan kept cutting back in.

"You -"

"Fucking—answer, goddamit!"

"Do you want an answer?" Jack growled back at being cut off, before stopping an incipient rant in its tracks.
Shaking his head, he started.

"I maced some asshole who tried sneaking up on me. Around a corner. With a gun. Know anybody like that around here?"

Beat.

"And I didn't know it was you. You didn't exactly shout 'Halt, who goes there, this is Donovan', man. I just heard someone rustling around and then start moving for me with a drawn gun. What the fucking hell was I supposed to think?"

As soon as he said this, Jack (somewhat quietly) took two steps to one side, pepper spray still at the ready...just in case Donovan decided to blind fire at where his voice was coming from.

Kaede just waited for a moment as the ringing subsided, somewhat. As she became able to hear things, she actually heard ... Donovan ... actually talking, and she raised herself to her feet.

Everything moved as they should. Nothing feeling wrong. Nothing red. She was fine. She was fine. She was fine.

Kaede just kept her hands up as she walked over to Jack. In all honesty, the blurry vision and heavy breathing was, actually, she was still quite scared.