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 Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 6:47 am
There is no rhyme or reason to this madness, she thought. This is just another battlefield. We've all moved past being civil. Anyone who pretends otherwise...
*cue inspiration lightbulb*
..is a traitor.
"I spoke too soon," A10 apologized, addressing A3's dead body. "We're still talking about traitors after all."
The adrenaline rush was fading, and she found herself almost.. tired out. Z5's body fell lifeless to the floor, and then A5's. It was not in the least touching, these small children crying out and running to their mother, only to be cut down.
A10 only had one regret. She'd wanted to punch A5 right in the face before he went. Though she supposed, since he was wearing a gas mask anyway, it was all rather moot.
Picking her way carefully past the three dead bodies, she returned to A7's side, glancing over to the rest of Team Phoenix. Funny that she still believed in them, when she had done nothing but laugh at the 355 unit.
"Is it over?"
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 6:53 am
Even as he charged toward A7, Fiver saw the scythe swinging down toward him ... and he didn't even try to dodge it. His fist went right by A7's head but it didn't matter. It didn't even MATTER anymore. They were dead, both of them dead ... the ones he'd tied his fate to in this mad game.
Dead because of idiocy and stupidity and a ******** clique who couldn't deal with people disagreeing. He hoped they did all die ... hoped the walls kept moving and squashed them all, just like that scene in Star Wars with no helpful droids to stop it or open the door for them.
"SEE YOU IN HELL!!!" he screamed, and then his voice was cut off, forever, as the scythe sliced across, through, his neck. And his masked head lifted up, almost seeming to float into the air ... sailing like some obscene ball lofted into space. It was like slow motion.
Until it bounced on the floor, his body following seconds later ... blood spraying out, head rolling, bouncing a few more times ... before landing upright. The eyes of the gasmask pointed toward A7 and the rest of the room ... almost accusingly ... and waiting. Waiting for them all to join him. Soon now ... soon.
(( A5 exiting to dead lounge~ again 8D ))
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:02 am
A7 turned his head up and looked at the ceiling for a moment. His breathing had become erratic, and the hand gripping the scythe felt like it was burning at the touch of the shaft. He barely heard A10's question, and turned his head back down to look - but the bodies lying at his feet caught his attention instead. He wrapped one arm around A10's shoulder, and pulled her tight against him.
"No, kitten." A frighteningly calm voice spoke. Was it even his? He couldn't recognize his own voice anymore.
"It's only just begun."
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:16 am
Those words sounded like they came from a cheesy horror flick, though for all intents and purposes... this was a cheesy horror flick. Parmesan, mozzarella... a bit of cheddar... and even some blue cheese, but that had been gotten rid of already.
Still, the words worried her. Left in this small room, with only a locked door.. where would they go? What could they do?
'Safe' in A7's arms (though she was beginning to wonder if anywhere was safe, at all) she snuck a peek at E5 and E13, with the pendants. So far they'd been attacking based simply, as A5 said, on how much they disliked what someone was saying. It felt like common sense to A10; why couldn't you attack someone who disagreed with you? Did the other person expect to get away scot-free for what they were saying? Did they expect other people to just... accept things?
No, she didn't think so. For everything she said, she fully expected to get hit. Even by A7, if it came to it.
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:18 am
Gamma Three had no intentions of sitting down.
She stood quietly as the world unraveled around her, her eyes widening little by little as the blood sprayed and the bodies fell. It happened too fast for the angry girl to even reply. To even move. To even do anything. The world descended into darkness and death at the speed of light, and she couldn't do a damn thing to stop it. For all her pretending and all of her speaking, there was still something about the way a person's blood gushed out of their neck after their head was cut off that made a person's stomach knot.
Was it against the rules to vomit stomach acid into your gas mask? She certainly hoped not.
Blood pooled on the floor, and Gamma Three stepped back.
It kept coming, and so she stepped back again.
She stepped back until her back bumped against the wall and her wide eyes couldn't look away from her own reflection in the expanding pool of blood. She didn't recognize that suited figure whose body seemed so small and terrified. She didn't recognize the way her hands shook and her heart leapt up into her throat. These things, these weaknesses, couldn't be her. None of this could be her.
She was not weak.
She was not fragile.
“It was me...” she said lowly, her eyes closed for a brief moment.
“Stop it – STOP IT.” Gamma Three lifted her gaze, and met with Alpha Seven's. Her hands were not shaking now. Her steps were sure and steady as she crossed the space between them.
Because this had to end.
Because there were two women Alpha Seven seemed hellbent on protecting, and none of these people had done anything to deserve to die.
Because the floorboards were red with blood, and she didn't recognize the girl reflected in it.
But the girl in the scythe? The girl who stood with her head held high, her mask like all the others reflected in that bloody blade? The one whose hands did not shake as she rested her fingers upon the blade and pressed her neck against it? She recognized that girl.
And she would sooner die as the girl in the blade than live as the one in the blood.
“It was me.”
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:27 am
[A7 is giving A10 the Scythe]
G3's voice was a jarring surprise. He hadn't expected to hear it - in fact, he'd expected to be yelled at any minute by Z8. Additionally, he expected the hail of attacks to come for him, the one who'd just slain three men in cold blood.
And yet, the room seemed eerily silent save for that one, lone woman's voice.
As G3 came forward, a sinking feeling started to settle in A7's stomach. His arm tightened around A10, but not for the same reasons - in fact, it almost felt as if he suddenly needed to be comforted. He didn't like what was happening, and it showed.
G3 stood in front of him, and A7 wanted to do nothing more than drop the scythe and plead for her to turn around and walk away. Anything - anything but just give herself up for the slaughter like this. Because she was wrong about one thing. A7 wasn't hellbent on protecting two women he thought he'd never met before in his life.
He was hellbent on protecting three.
The scythe clattered noisily at A10's feet. He hadn't even had a chance to lift it in an attempt to strike her. He couldn't. His entire body had frozen up at the idea. He was supposed to save them all, wasn't he? He was supposed to kill and kill until the ticking stopped, but he could still hear it, and this woman - this one woman, was ready to be next.
Yet his hands were now empty and trembling, and he felt like he was going to be sick.
[HP: 12]
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:31 am
(( E-13 is Neutral ))
That is not dead which can eternal lie / And with strange aeons even death may die.
E-13 couldn't remember what it was from. Shakespeare? But it was all he could think of. ...Where had he...?
"The...the hell it was you!" E-13 burst out at Gamma Three. "My a** was on the line, if it hadn't been for that crazy stand against Death stuff you pulled...!"
E-13 didn't care who she was, Harry Potter or Gamma Three or the Queen of France, she's the one who had come through in the clutch.
"You swing that thing Harry Potter's way and I'll...uh..." He was already instinctively tightening his left hand, but his knife was conspicuously missing.
"s**t, where'd my knife go? Well I'll, uh..." A7 forked the scythe over to A10, who now had a huge scythe. He just wasn't sure how much dodging and punching he could do. Diplomacy. Diplomacy, now was the time for diplomacy... "Tell you what, why don't you leave Gamma Three out of this, and I'll just let you have the other pendant, I wasn't using it anyhow."
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:41 am
A10 blinked, watching G3. "It was me," she kept repeating, and A10 was only barely aware of A7 holding her closer to him.
But what were you? She couldn't make any sense of what the girl was saying; all she felt was the overwhelming desire to put her arms around her and comfort her in any way she could.
A sudden clatter and a squeak- A7 had dropped the scythe, and she jumped at the sound. Kneeling, she tried to pick it up: it was just as heavy as she'd been told, but somehow, just somehow she managed to grasp and lift it.
When she stood, her armour was dripping with blood. Blood on the floor, blood everywhere. Blood on A7's hands, and her own, and on G3's gas mask.
"It was me," G3 said again, from directly in front of her.
A10 simply reached a hand out and wiped the blood off the other girl's mask.
Only then did she turn to E13, who'd rushed over in an attempt to.. protect G3, it seemed. "I'll give you the pendant," he'd said; how tempting.
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:53 am
(( E-13 is neutral. ))
E-13 breathed out in relief.
Not one of his squad members, not anyone he knew specifically, but he could appreciate a cavalry tearing up his death sentence any time.
"Here," he said, taking out the remaining pendant as promised, and eyeing the scythe uneasily. And with the same stab of jealousy he'd felt the first time it had showed up. All they'd gotten was a knife, but here was this big....beautiful...glowing...not the time.
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:54 am
Gamma Three smiled.
She smiled because she knew. People were selfish and hateful and could be downright cruel. People killed and fought and shed blood as naturally as they breathed, but people were good. People came through when you needed them to come through, and as the scythe clattered to the ground, Gamma Three threw her arms around Alpha Seven's neck and hugged him in a surprisingly childish way.
Because he, too, was good when it was all said and done. Scared, maybe. Protective, certainly. Ready to fight and kill for what he believed was right, to defend who he felt deserved to live over those he didn't. But still good.
When she withdrew, she looked back to E-13, and stepped back from the Alpha to stand by him.
Gamma Three couldn't help but grin, gruesome as it was, as Alpha Ten wiped the blood from her mask. Even so, she lifted her hands to bat the other girl away and spent a moment trying to get the blood off of her mask.
She could do it herself, ten! GOD. GOD.
She felt herself very Potteresque as she rested a hand lightly upon the shoulder of the man who'd stepped up to defend her.
“It could be me as easily as anyone else. The truth is, we don't know who it was. It said itself that the person could have not even know they've broken the rules. I stole a medkit from a fallen team mate. I killed something in the fog.
Our choices are to kill each other blindly until that clock stops ticking, or wait for it to stop.
And hope we're okay with who we are and what we've done when it does.”
She looked down at the beheaded body of Alpha Five.
"At least that guy was a d**k."
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:57 am
She took the pendant from him, staring at it. It shone a bright, clear blue; a light that called to her.
"I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired to ask what you offer. And now at last it comes. You will give me the pendant freely! In place of the Reaper you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be cloaked, but beautiful and terrible as the Cornfields and the Beach (but not a beach, ok). Dreadful as the Magical Talking Pony and the Mysterious Source of Light! Fair as the... I'm running out of things to say! Stronger than the foundations of the island. All shall love me and despair!" A10 held the pendant up to the light, and it seemed almost to shine, blazing as hot as a star. It threw everything else into shadow; for a moment, there was only A10 in the light. In this glorious, glorious moment, she was completely unaware that she was spouting utter crap. She didn't even know what powers the pendant had.. she was just winging it, okay? It sounded cool, at least. Deal with it.
And then a drop of blood fell, marring the pendant. Almost immediately the glow faded, and A10 simply laughed.
"I pass the test," she said. "I will diminish, and go wherever the game dictates, and remain A10." Returning E13 the pendant, she smiled at him.
"I have no more reason to kill anyone, unless they attack someone I wish to protect. Until then..." letting her voice drift off, she turned back to G3.
"Don't try to destroy yourselves, either."
She chuckled, though, at G3's comment. "Yes.. yes he was."
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 8:05 am
(( E-13 is Neutral ))
E-13 breathed out one more time, heavily, as Gamma Three clapped him on the shoulder and A-10 accepted the pendant. His knees wobbled, then gave out, and he dropped to sit on the floor.
Tantamount to giving her his life...
Well, not until Day 7. It wasn't over yet. And there'd be more time to get a pendant, when they weren't trapped in a room with something that totaled people in one swipe. The target on his back in this room may have dissipated, but once he left, it was right back to that two pendants text s**t.
"So I'm for waiting," he said. "For all we know, it was one of these three guys. Guilty guy dead."
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 8:08 am
Gamma Three had hugged him the first time she met him. He'd almost killed her then - his mace had risen up to clobber her over the head, even as she latched onto his face and refused to let go.
But he hadn't.
A7 let out a strange, ridiculously pathetic sound when her arms wrapped around his neck, and he cleared his throat quickly to hide it. Nevertheless, when she hugged him, he used his free arm to return the favor - picking her up off her feet for a few seconds, before dropping her back down. There was something comforting about the hug, but it was in that place - that far away place that made his head hurt whenever he tried to remember it. It was just out of his reach.
But she was wrong.
If the blood on the floor proved anything, it was that A7 was not, by any stretch of the imagination, good. And he realized, as he looked at his footprint in the blood, that he had just answered the question they'd been asking all along.
Was there ever a traitor in their midst before he'd killed three men? Probably not. Was there now? Most definitely.
He watched E13 give A10 the pendant, and sighed in relief. Was that really all it took to get A10 a pendant? He should have given her the scythe sooner. Except..
"Wait-" But it was too late, A10 had already given the pendant back. Was there seriously no way to keep this girl alive? A7 was fighting a losing battle.
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 8:18 am
...And then A-10 handed him the pendant back.
He gawped at it dopily.
Passed?
"Well, well uh," he said, not able to articulate. He sniffed under the mask instead, holding back the inclination to bawl like a kid. ".....Th-thanks."
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 8:22 am
[E-1 is Neutral, terrified, and extremely confused.]
What? What? Whatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhat had just happened?
Why had the reaper submitted to his own rules? Why hadn't he left behind a body? The other three bodies on the floor (oh god the blood) were definitely still there, but the reaper had left behind nothing but his cloak, a watch, and the weapon now in the hands of A-10. E-10 was wearing the top half of the cloak, earning her an incredulous stare form E-1, as she moved toward the spot where the reaper had fallen, and examined the floor. Was there a trap door, maybe? She could only hope that the reaper had made an escape through some mundane means.
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