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When disaster struck, there were two ways to handle it.

Some, like Yahya, internalized. They absorbed negativity like a sponge, tried to sort it out within the sphere of their own mind, and got torn up inside until they overcame it.

Sue didn't work like that. When Sue came across something too big to handle, he started shoving people around. He started picking fights. He fought ******** back.

The purple-haired boy was pacing, aggravated. Back and forth, back and forth, damn near wearing a track in the floor where he walked. Always though, his steps led him back to Yahya. Now and again he'd glance at the other boy, searching. If his eyes were met, he gave a guilty start and looked away - if not, his jaw got working, and his thoughts churned.

Plan? Oh yes. Sue had a plan. Sue had a <********> of plans. Some of them were not well-suited for humanity, burning in the darkest corners of his mind; most of them led to bloodshed. Strange, maybe, that these plans were no longer shelved as inhumane, but that's what happened after seeing one of your friends - one of the few people worth caring about, one of the few people who depended on you - get eaten alive.

"This is how it's gonna be, then?" Sue snapped suddenly, wheeling around to face the room. "We let them outnumber us, pick us off one at a time, 'til they swamp us? Hah!" His feet found the familiar path, and he started pacing again. From their sentry post near the door, his feline companions pricked their ears and watched him in interest.

"No. We aren't doing that. We're ******** better than that." A sneer jumped to his lips. He was disgusted of this life already, this hiding and running and waiting for rescue. Rescue wasn't coming. They were as good as they got, and that was ******** good enough. "We're overdue to hit 'em back. We take down their numbers, then maybe they can't get us so easy."

There were plans. Oh yes. So many of them building up in his head, laying one brick of destruction after another, like a ******** yellow brick road of zombie corpses. A feral smile got onto his lips then. "That's the what. Everybody knows why. I got the where. I even got the how. All we need is the who."

And who else? It was his friend he turned on, then. Marching right over, Sue got Yahya by the front of the shirt and hauled him up. "We're better than that," he told the other in a low, angry hiss. "We're better because we've lived this long. And we're better because we aren't going to sit around feeling sorry until it happens again." It. The loss of another friend. Someone else caught alone with the zombie hoard running amok.

He released Yahya. "I know you. You're better than that. You're fighting back."

Lost in her own little meditative world, Jess sat in one of the chairs, her injured ankle propped up on the desk in front of her. As she curled in on herself, she realized dully that she'd somehow mentally moved past the point of embarrassment for her current, unintentional panty-flashing appearance. Maybe it was due to the fact that the two biggest lechs in the school hadn't said anything to her about it before they'd left. Huh, all Andeon had said was to get her ankle splinted up better. And Kirin had. Unfortunately, all the hobbling, standing, moving was taking its toll and her ankle had become a swollen, throbbing mass of hot, needle-y pain.

Picking up her head from the circle of her arms, she glanced briefly at the other survivors who'd come in. But somehow, listening to Sue's bombastic assurances didn't comfort her. Andeon and Mackenzie had been comforting. And they hadn't come back yet. Deep inside, Jess was convinced that they weren't going to come back. And even though she hadn't known them very well, the thought made a lump of bitter sorrow rise in her throat.

But somehow, in spite of herself, Sue's words set off a tiny flame. Unfortunately, it wasn't the flame of hope, but black anger. Sitting up and staring at the boy, she heard herself nearly snarling.

"Are you ********, gods-damned kidding me? Have you bothered to tally up sides, resources and general ability? How exactly are we supposed to take down their numbers, O Noble Leader?" Jess's voice made a bitter mockery of the title. "Because, frankly, I don't see us being able to do a whole lot with rulers, scissors and pencils."

Now she was sneering, un-Jess like as she waved a hand around the room.

"Look at us. I can barely walk, never mind running. He," she gestured to Yahya, "looks like he's going into deep shock and you think standing there yelling and spouting off all sorts of macho s**t is going to inspire us?"

Jess began to feverishly tear the wrapping from her ankle. She was going to re-wrap it and then... and then... she paused a moment. Eyeing the ceiling, her face took on a thoughtful look. Well, why not, she thought, a glimmer of a smile flickering across her face. Everyone's gotta go sometime. And it's wasn't everyday that you got to pick how you went out. And as far as she was concerned, it would be her and not Sue who would be dictating that.

Somehow throughout the long night watching the dorms burn and the long day waiting for people to come back who never would, something inside Jess had snapped.

He hadn't seen Sue approach him, hadn't been able to even look at his friend straight since they had came to the math classroom. Yahya was taken by surprise, feeling a strong hand fist in his shirt, drag him out of the chair and onto his feet. In a last minute scramble, he gathered the squirrels in his lap against his chest to keep them from falling to the floor. His orange eyes, red with tears, stared widely and with muted surprise at his friend. Why was Sue singling him out? Why wouldn't Sue... he didn't understand, but then again he didn't fight his friend. He stood there, immobilized by his pain and shock.

He couldn't say no. Sue knew that, Sue knew how to push him.

Yahya glanced to the side, to Evelyn who was rising to his defense, and he flashed her a shaky smile. "It's okay..." Though he spoke with little confidence. That had all been shattered when Zeke was killed, and it would take some time yet for it to build itself back up. Until then, Sue would just have to keep pushing him so that Yahya would find some amount of strength to protect himself and those people who mattered to him.

Sue released him, and he stumbled back down into his seat weakly. Columbus meowed at him, but Yahya's attention was stolen by his friend. "If we... don't do anything, we'll just get picked off." He wasn't sure if he wanted to live or die, but he knew that he didn't want Sue to. He had to protect Sue, couldn't fail in protecting Sue like he had failed Zeke. "I'm sure not everyone wants to die."

His eyes were still red, and he let out a little half-sniffle-half-sob occasionally, but at least he was no longer a total mess.

"I'm all for Operation Get The Hell Out Of Here, or Operation Get ******** Backup," Kirin interrupted the fight to add his two cents. "But the fact is that we can't leave the grounds any more than we can tell our families or anyone else about the weird s**t that's been going on here. Even if you got the police or the military on the phone, you'd choke yourself unconscious before you could force out 'zombies'."

He scowled at the girls. Hadn't they noticed anything weird before this week and tried to tell anyone? Never tried to sneak off campus during term? Or maybe their brainwashing was strong enough that never even considered those options.

"If we could find a working phone, we could call in a bomb threat or report the fire. But until we find anything like that, we need to stay alive. And since hiding never seems to work for longer than an hour or two, lowering the number of zombies out there seems like a pretty decent idea right now."

Oh god, the apocalypse was night. Kirin was supporting the "run in blind, guns blazing" approach. Only they didn't even get any goddamn guns.

At this point, it might have been easier to ignore the naysayers. But as the case may have it, Sue was the sort who tended to barrel through things the hard way. Built character, or some s**t like that.

"I'm not," Sue crossed his arms, "looking for people that don't have the will to hit back. I'm looking for volunteers that get the idea that if they do this and pull their share, they're making this goddamn nightmare a little less dangerous for everyone. Including," his eyes narrowed slightly at Jess, then glanced away, "the folk that aren't up to the task."

Oh yeah. That was right, he went there. With her leg, Sue didn't think that Jess could help him. Be a part of planning, maybe - if she got over her whiny, oh Sue you are so mean, oh Sue I can't do that, oh Sue just lie down and wait to die already! stage - but that was as damn close to the actual battlefield as he'd let her be.

"I don't sleep through all of history class, y'know. There are ways to do this. Small numbers against a bigger force - it's done every day." Granted, it was usually done by people who had better, not equal, knowledge of the terrain as their enemies - but Sue liked to think they could still make it work. "What we do is create a choke point. We set defenses, and we steer them toward us. We hit them from afar, let them gnaw on their own for a change. And once the defenses stop being good - bam. Retreat through a back door."

And anyone who argued with that without offering something in return? He didn't ******** need, anyway.

"Guerilla warfare?" Kirin perked up, giving a grin that some might find slightly disturbing. "I like it. Fighting smart is the kind of fighting I can totally get behind."

Even though at this point he might just snap and attack a room full of zombies, it was nice to know that wasn't actually on the cards. Instead, they got to play human chess. Or should that be...

"Zombie chess," Kirin laughed to himself. Tossing his pigtails, he stared at Sue consideringly. Who'd have thought that Sue would be making a good leader? Taking the weaknesses of the group into account, not to mention the enemies higher numbers. Kirin supposed the real test was if Sue could plan for all the unnatural strengths the zombies had, too. "I'm so in, volunteer me up. What's the plan, fearless leader?"

Why yes, Kirin was in a good mood. He was going to kick some zombie a** without having to be suicidal about it. It was a good day.

Wait. Jess was.....

What, seriously? She was trying to help? She thought she could help? There were going to be zombies. Not slow-shuffling in the movies, but fast-walking. And she was....

Planning to die, Sue realized. Not just acknowledging the potential. She was planning on it. Either he was a much more compelling speaker than he thought he was - extremely doubtful - or Jess was just ******** insane.

In a certain light, he could respect that.

"... Yeah. You too. No martyrs," he told her in clipped, short words, and moved on. God knew they needed the help, but when the retreat was called, if she had a way out, he expected her to take it.

He really did think there was a chance they could all survive this, however slight.

"Over by the dormitories," he stated, "there's a groundkeeper's hut. We set up with our backs to the dorms. Make some barriers, dig some trenches. Use the pesticides to fill up the trenches, stock up things we can throw. Once we're all set up, we light up the trenches and start leading in the greenies. One at a time if we have to, but if we do this right, we can take bigger groups and mow them down before they ever get near us."

"Any zombies that drop, we stake out for the rest between rushes. We can drop 'em, but they always come back - but I bet you anything that when those ******** turn on the others, we don't see them popping up again." Of course, that was relying on the hope that there would be zombies more eager to chew on their brethren than the survivors - but at least it was a hope.

"Once the defenses go down - they take out the barriers and there's no getting them up again, or there's enough of them to get past the trenches - we pull a retreat through the dorms. There's a hole in the wall we'll hide from sight. We'll seal off the passageway that connects to, set up some sort of, I don't know, something to cover the exit behind us once we're all through. We turn up on the other side of the school, and head out to lie low and regroup."

He'd thought it through to the best of his knowledge, at least. In theory, the plan sounded solid - to him, at least. But Sue was willing to bet - was counting on - someone here being a little smarter than him, someone here having something to add.

Because God help them all if Sue was going to be the brains of the group, really.



((Here's the deal guys: I want to have the RP for this maneuver going by Wednesday. So don't worry about post order from here on out, because we need to keep things rolling if we're going to get everything done!

If you have an idea for a fortification, you can run with it - just establish it in continuity with an RP setting it up or something, and I'll take note of it for the final design. ICly, they'll planning this a few days, then setting this up over the course of a day, so keep that in mind with your plans - it has to be something that can be set up quickly!

I got a Plotting Thread up so that we can discuss plans there, so if you want to pound something out OOCly, that's the place to do it. <3 Looking forward to this plot, so thank you guys for joining in!))