Sam Michelson

He'd never tried. It was a bitter revelation, one that tasted like blood and smelled of champagne. It was bubbly, poured over ice, and served with a twisted smile.

Sam never once thought he'd have to try to exist. Never considered what it was like to fight, to pull, to push and scream, to claw at existence with cut fingers and bloody talons. It had never been hard. Life had been a cold, soft existence. It was liquor kept in the freezer. Hard was the bottle. Hard was the cork. Hard was the hand that held it.

But his hands were soft.

The creases between his eyebrows and forehead darkened, battered by sweat and grime. Seaweed clung to his clothes, coating him with a thick stench that wouldn't dissolve like his blood did. The water was unforgiving, a hungry callous that stained the island with its presence. Even the fish could not stay and swim in it. They came in thick clusters and disappeared fast after.

The sharks swam about. They were eating the fish from the cove--delighted by the presence of college's worth of marine life. Sam's ignorant presence was nothing to them. Every few minutes he'd feel them brush against the raft, ramming their sharp noses into it, but they swam away like it was poison.

It seemed even the sea life of the island hated humanity.

Almost a mile away, Danny sat on the store. His eyes were dark as his nose turned to the sand. The fire sat behind him, still roaring, twisting, snapping. Unlike the doll that was Sam's former lover, the fire still had something akin to life within it.

Sam hated how Danny looked. He wanted a gentle lover, a forbidden romance, a stolen kiss and dance in the dark. Instead, he received a human.

Life was bitter like that.

"Your fever is getting worse."

Danny had to live his own life.

"I can't keep taking care of you, Sam."

He wasn't meant to be a caretaker.

"I'm going to swim out to the raft and get help."

"And...leave me here?"

"What's the alternative?"

The alternative--one that Sam could see and Danny couldn't. Their life, lived there, forever on the island. Trusting one another. Deep in a love that even the Gods couldn't destroy.

But that wasn't possible. Sam couldn't weave baskets--he couldn't deal with the bugs, the mud, the survival.

Danny was meant for that type of life. Danny was meant to be anywhere--a person easily changed, easily shifted, making room for himself wherever he went.

Making room, because no one else would.

Not even Sam.

After an hour, the ocean released him.

The waves returned and forced the raft back by the beach, where Danny waded in. They stood there for what felt like hours, their eyes locked on one another.

"Are you okay?"

"No."

Danny nodded, grabbed the raft, and drug it to shore. His muscles were lined with sweat, bright red from the sun. They strained and Sam wanted nothing more than to lick the trouble from his brow. To take hold his lover and run his hands along his body until he knew every inch of it once more. No--until he knew it for the first time.

"I'm sorry," Sam said once they were ashore. His voice was rough, and his body ached from head to toe. Still, he stood, facing Danny with whatever dignity he could manage. Danny avoided his eyes. "I never tried to know you. I wanted to run away--but I didn't want to work. I didn't want to know you. I didn't want you. I wanted a dream. And you're not a dream."

Danny kept his eyes low. "So you never wanted me. That's what you're sorry for?"

"Yes."

It was still, the silence between them. Then, Danny turned and picked up his sharpened stick. "Catch dinner," he said.

He entered the jungle, leaving Sam alone at the beach.

So Sam caught dinner. For hours he stood, nearly wheezing, his lungs caught between collapse and disaster. His fever must have started up again for he saw not fish in the water but birds--birds with outstretched wings and large talons and golden beads for eyes. He saw them and his mouth watered. He licked his lips--they were dry. His tongue was dry. Soaking with sweat and dry as a bone.

It was then that the heavens started to cry--loud, thick tears that soaked Sam until he knew nothing more than their cold embrace. He lifted his lips and drank, laughter filling him.

"Danny!"

The one fish Sam caught couldn't be cooked--no, not tonight. Not with the storm and the crackles of thunder overhead. Not with the waves, growing at Sam's feet.

"Danny?"

He was no where to be seen--still lost within the recesses of the jungle. Sam swallowed his pride and buried the fish--they could find it later, once they were ready. Once they were ready.

"Danny, please talk to me. I'm sorry, Danny. I'm sorry. Let me be better--please, let me try."

His words meant nothing to the trees that bent towards him with hatred in their vines. It meant nothing for the mosquitoes that swarmed about, biting every inch of open skin. It meant nothing to the bugs that crawled over his body, slapping his face, draining him of energy. It meant nothing to Danny--to the sobbing husk of a man who lay hidden beneath branches in a home he'd created. The fire burnt slow and steady.

"You never tried to know me," Danny said. "You never wanted to. Not once."

"I didn't."

It was far past the time of lies. The truth was there and it was ugly.

"Why?"

There was no good answer. Nothing to make things better. Nothing that would make Danny feel better, at least.

"Because I wanted to escape," Sam said, a sob caught between his soul and Danny's. "And you were my getaway car."

Their conversation was cut short by a clap of thunder and a scuttle. A loud, loud noise--one Danny had heard before. A heartbeat with feet.

Eyes, resting deep within the jungle.

"Danny, don't--"

It moved forward, no--away, a low hiss and a guttural cry its only warning.

Sam moved closer to his former lover--unable to do anything more than act as a shield. To stand there, staring whatever it was down.

He couldn't breathe scarce for the wheeze that settled deep within his throat. It was far faster than him, impossible to catch, and it stayed in the jungle where Danny wept.

It wasn't large, the monster of the depth. No, it was a human-sized beast, with eyes that glinted in the moonlight. It was the jungle itself--a beast far older than time could explain. It was alive, and however it breathed, Sam knew that the jungle's poison that ran through it and forced its heart to pump. Human in design alone, its voice was a rasp and a squeal.

It slinked away, waiting for another moment. A better time.

Sam, too, turned his head towards the mist surrounding the island. It covered them in a thick layer of grief. A security blanket from the horrors they were yet to discover.

"Come on," he whispered to Danny, nudging him. "Let's head back to the beach."

"No." Danny turned, keeping his face away from Sam. "You go."

He sat there instead. Still. Quiet.

"Leave, S-" Danny couldn't bring himself to say his name. It stood still, on the tip of his tongue, and out came a moan that ended in a larger sob. It was terrible. It was horrific. It was real.

And, ugly as it was, Sam couldn't help but love the way his lover sounded.

"I'm staying here," Sam said, reaching out to him. Danny flinched but didn't move away. Cold skin met ice--Sam's hands ran over every inch until it melted beneath him. "I'm not leaving you. Never again. I don't know you--I don't know myself--but there is one thing I know."

"And what's that?"

Sam leaned in, his lips brushing against Danny's chin. "I love you." He didn't know if he whispered it or thought it, but it didn't matter. Danny knew. Sam knew.

It was the last lie he'd ever utter. One that he prayed would become real by sunrise.

Flashes of thunder rooted themselves in the canopy above. They danced and swayed, their love rough and fast and empty. The storm ended as it came, with a sweep of a cloud and the flick of a wrist. It settled into the horizon and Sam watched as the leaves, bent with water, snapped into place bit by bitter bit.

Beside him, Danny's head turned. Lay against him. Breathed in deep. Once, twice, and a snore sealed their fate.

It was a pretty solitude.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny Michelson

The sunlight had never burned brighter than it did once Danny realized he was alone. All his life, he'd tried to fill the void of loneliness inside him, marking the passage of time only with the departure of each person he gave himself to. Friends and lovers, siblings and parents, all disappeared into the mist of his past. Leaving him stranded, in more ways than one.

The air in his lungs was hot and thick as he made his way through the thick jungle foliage, putting as much distance between himself and Sam as possible. He needed space. Air. Room to breathe in the suffocating heat. He needed to feel the hot sting of tears rolling silently down his cheeks, springing up from somewhere deep inside of him. He needed to feel the ache of his bruises and the sharp sting of tender flesh beneath the thick scabs that covered his body. He knew he'd come back. Sam was helpless without him, even if Danny wasn't much better. Each time his foot fell against the soft soil, embedding his footprints in the island's history, he could practically hear his conscience guiding him back to the beach. Back to Sam.

Overhead, the sky began to stir. Thunder growled in a cloudless sky, promising that change was swift and inevitable. The thought of rain made his throat ache. Danny forced himself to swallow, trying to combat the dryness that overtook his mouth. Nothing had ever sounded quite as blissful as the thought of pure, fresh water. I'll live to see it, he promised himself as he pushed through the jungle. Branches scratched at his arms, leaves running their razor-blade edges across his exposed flesh, but the cuts were nothing. I have to.

His feet slowed for a moment, treading carefully into a small clearing. He understood the jungle enough by now to know that any open space, any sign of relief or help, was deadly. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he scanned the trees around him for any sign of a threat. But there was nothing. Only birds, perched so delicately on branches far above him, and the march of ants as they winded around the trunks of those same trees. Everything felt balanced. Water dripped off of leaves, splashing into mossy puddles near his feet. The soil was soft and greedy, consuming everything that placed weight on its surface, including what remained of Danny's ruined shoes.

For a moment, Danny's chest felt a little lighter than before. There was something about the clockwork of it all that made his breathing easier. Every aspect of the island worked in sync with the rest, even the most brutal and vicious aspects of it. The flowers wilted and fed the earth, the earth fed the trees, the trees sheltered the birds, and the birds planted the seeds that grew the flowers. All of it worked in a perfect cycle, each portion trusting the others to complete the job at hand. Once more, the sky grumbled as the first speckles of clouds began to move into view. Danny tilted his head upwards, eyes squinting beneath the burning light of the sun. Slowly, his lips began to part, letting out an exhale of breath that left him deflated and hollow inside. For once, the feeling was welcome.

Pulling his shoes out of the sinking mud, Danny began to move once more. There was no destination in mind, no objective to reach. Just the ache of his weary muscles as he dragged them through the untouched wilderness. But the rock stopped him. It was a large, sloping thing, overlooking the edge of the clearing and on to a spring of water below. There was nothing particularly important about it, just a grey piece of stone jutting upwards from the earth. Unless he looked closer. Unless he, oh so gently, stepped across the boundary of mud and soil, to where it rested.

The bones were waiting there as if they had waited for a thousand years. Danny had never seen a decayed body before, but he couldn't deny what his eyes told him to be true. They were human. Time had worn away any memory of the person who they had once belonged to, but the polished white glow of their presence was unmistakable. Someone else was trapped here. Years ago. Bile rose in the back of his throat, a bitter burn that caused him to stumble backward. There was something else that bothered him. Something worse. The skull was missing, and as his eyes slowly scanned the area for any sign of it, the trees behind him began to rustle and stir.

A deep growl echoed all around him, bouncing off of the trees until he was surrounded by its sound. Not quite animal, not quite human, but something horrifyingly in-between. Their eyes met, Danny's hands curled into fists as he stared down at the creature that watched him from within the darkness of the jungle. The sky above began to dim, the first fat drops of rain splashing to the earth. His whole body stiffened, trying to stand his ground against the monster in the trees, trying to hide the way the hairs on the back of his neck raised. We're not alone here. Heart thumping in his chest, he listened as the smallest rustle gave away that it was moving. In a single moment of clarity, as the rain began to pour downwards from the heavens, Danny made his choice. I have to get back. He turned, and he ran.

It had always been easier to keep the little details out. To let the wounds that would fester his relationships be self-inflicted, even if he blamed the other party. Sam had never tried to get to know him, but Danny had never given him the chance. If he stayed there, at the crossroads between graves, he never would. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jennifer Mizushima

Ink was such a fascinating substance. Most practically used in writing utensils that spanned every era, they etched more than just important documents that spelled every epoch and calamity in history as people knew it. They aided the writer in remembering every word they wrote, every minute spent wallowing in universal emotions doing whatever they so happened to be doing. The loops, the scratches, the intricate strokes filling pages smooth and rough, blotted or unblemished, formed more than just words--they created stories, passed down from generation to generation. They solidified memories, etched in time, engraved forever in history.
Yet it seemed to also create a wonderful defence mechanism that, undiluted, could potentially kill the unwary adversary.The vile taste in Jennifer's mouth refused to leave even after she had spat and rinsed in many a river, and vomited over several shelves of rock. Whether the substance entered her lungs or intestines, she would only know the next time she visited the doctor. Until then, she had her pounding head and heart to give her any sign of her slowly slipping health degrading even further. It didn't help that the warning about eating raw fish in sushi and the illnesses they posed continuously flashed in her mind--and call her a hypocrite, but she hardly ever ate sushi in her life, let alone like it.
She blinked away the tears that brimmed in her eyes, withdrawing the sharp crystal that still remained in her pocket after all the catastrophes she went through. The slingshot had long been discarded, the stones cast back into the banks of the river. Something about wielding this strange gem seemed to empower her, push her through this hell of a foreign environment that constantly scared the shit out of her. Though unrefined, unlike its cousins inlaid in gold and silver, it held value and worth--unlike her.
What chance did she stand in this hell, anyway? The more she mulled over her father's words, the more she realized how unprepared she was for the vast world that laid at her feet. Her indecision only resulted in the countless opportunities, dazzling with the allure of butterfly wings above her head, to flutter away, unharmed but unclaimed. She couldn't even think about her future on this island, let alone this world, without recalling the regret and fear that flashed in her mind--all she knew for absolute certain was that she couldn't end up dead.
With each deep inhale, the musty smell of petrichor and urine strengthened, soon laced with the stench of spoiled raw meat that made her stomach rise to her throat. She worked up a quick wad of saliva, swishing it round every corner of her mouth, and just as she was about to spit it out she heard a loud long screech right by her ear, followed by the raking of claws over her right shoulder.
Out the wad of saliva went, soaring in a perfect parabolic projectile toward the offender--a large red parrot which swerved out of the way, allowing the spit to land on a low curved branch of some sort a few feet away.
"What the..."
Hand still gripping tight over the crystal, Jennifer cautiously approached the wad of spit atop--what was that coming out of the ground? A tree root? No, it wasn't as gnarly. Crouching low, she prodded the curve with her crystal, surprised at how quickly the surface disintegrated under the sharp point. Another step forward--and that was when she heard a distinct crunch beneath her heel.
There was no stopping the shriek that ripped out of her throat as she stumbled onto her bottom, her eyes now wide and staring at the rotting skeleton corpse that laid before her. The hand that she stepped on had now cracked into separate joints, severed at the wrist, but the pain in her heel was a secondary issue. The skull, deformed and misshapen from years of eroding, had completely detached itself from the spine, almost as if some external force had decapitated the human that once existed. What remained of the flesh that housed veins and muscles had all but rotted away, a tasty source of prey for small predators that constantly brushed by her ankles.
"RRRAAAAHHHHHH!"
A girl's enraged shout, high-pitched and raspy, echoed through the clearing, but Jennifer could not see where it came from, even as she squinted at the dark shapes floating through the trees.
"Who's there?" she barked. "Show yourself."
"MAAAAAAAA!"
"Show yourself, you coward," Jennifer repeated herself, pushing herself to her feet. "I know you've been judging me the minute we were washed up here. Show yourself, or I'll vomit over your ma's corpse next."
For a few seconds, silence ensued, the sounds of crackling leaves above her head piercing the tension. Then—
"RRRRRAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
A sudden thud on the ground followed, and Jennifer's eyes narrowed at her new nemesis—a girl around her age with vivid bright green eyes gleaming in rage, her long blonde hair strewn with dried mud and leaves. Her pale skin was caked with mud, decked with the same scarlet scars that marked all over Jennifer's body, and in her hand she held a roughly fashioned wooden club.
"You think you can go about threatening humankind, knowing full well that you're human too?" Jennifer inquired her, clicking her tongue in disapproval.
"MA!" the girl screeched, pointing to her skeleton with a wild look in her widened eyes. She then pointed to Jennifer, prodding her chest with a finger, and then worked up a formidable wad of saliva, spitting it onto Jennifer's shirt.
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry, alright? I had no idea—"
But the girl seemed to take no heed to Jennifer's halfhearted apology. She continued to spit onto Jennifer's body, slapping every wad away with a flick of her hand every time and gesticulating to her mother's skeleton on the ground. The sticky liquid clung onto the thinning fabric like glue--it was not only the moisture doubling itself over and over on Jennifer's skin, but the fact that she'd take such impolite means to prove her point, that made Jennifer visibly cringe.
"Ew. Gross," Jennifer muttered, reaching out for a leaf to wipe the spit away. "You really are one undisciplined child, aren't you."
"Hrrrm?" the girl growled, tilting her head at Jennifer with a frown.
"You can't just go about spitting on other people like that! I didn't mean to spit on your mom, alright, it was an accident!"
"RRRRAAAAAAHHHH!"
Another rake of nails drew pink parallel lines over Jennifer's left cheek, narrowly avoiding her eye as she blinked at the agonizing pain.
"Stop this already!" Jennifer seethed, her fist holding the crystal raised to eye level. "I've apologized, you big baby! Yeesh, what did your mom teach you before she passed?"
The girl's eyes continued to narrow in sheer unforgiving as she stared the redhead down, twisting the blonde hair in her fingers in an attempt to rid it of the dried crackling dirt. Then she drew a finger over her neck, nodding afterwards to the stone shelf a few feet away from the clearing.
"No," she growled then, shaking her head. "Rrrrahh!"
She took her club then and smashed it over the fragile ribs of the skeleton, growling at the dull clunks of bones snapping and disconnecting from each other.
One moment, she resented her for spitting on her mother's corpse. Now she was the one dissing shit on her mother's memory. It was hard to read this strange island girl, Jennifer figured—the longer one stayed away from humanity, the less human they'd become until nature in its purest form strips them entirely of everything that made them human in the first place. In the end, it really all came down to an internal battle to side with either one or the other—either with humanity, or with undomesticated nature.
At least Jennifer had a family to watch over her. At least everyone she knew had some figure of authority to guide her through life. Meanwhile, this girl had no one to discipline her.
In some way, this was worse than dealing with the popular snobby brats at her school.
"But surely you must have loved your mother at some point?" Jennifer asked her tentatively. "She must have sacrificed so much for you to survive at all on this island."
The girl let out a shrill howl at this question, a noise that could scare away every bird in the vicinity, and shook her head vigorously.
"Nooooo!" she simply wailed. "No, no, no!"
Another quick wad of spit was forming in Jennifer's mouth at this point, along with the familiar yet foreign sensation of nausea shooting up her oesophagus, and she had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from vomiting again.
"Look, I can relate. I know how you feel. I did not want to board that boat. I did not ask to become a survivor of a shipwreck. I did not ask to be bombarded by threats on this island, either," Jennifer murmured, her voice low and pointed in an effort to keep her intestines down while calming the girl down. "But even the slightest resistance against my parents' wishes could do nothing to stop them from loving and caring for me. I know that even now they pray for my safety because it's all they can do when their child is far from reach. You might wish for your mother's further demise, but I would never wish my father dead."
These words did not have any effect on the girl at all. With a snarl, she yanked the redhead toward her by the collar and raised her club high above her head.
Checkmate. The girl had lured her to a crossroads, and there was no turning back.
To flee, or to succumb? To live, or to die? Jennifer felt her knees buckle at the sight of the club looming high above, eyes wide now at the undesirable options she was given. Her past indecisions and their consequences flooded full force in her memory once more, and her fingers curled around the wrist that held tight to her shirt, the grip strong enough to suffocate her. Wasn't the answer obvious here, at the very least? Hesitate a second longer, and she would never take another breath again.
But if she did, what would she do? The island has driven her too close to the brink of insanity, to the point where she herself would turn as mad as the girl before her. Should she make it back home, what would happen to her reputation? Would she still have one?
To be, or not to be?
There was no option to stop the pen. Before either girl could comprehend what was happening, Jennifer's fist connected with the blonde's nose, pushing her off her chest. Scarlet blood instantly flowed down her face, a crimson torrent over pale dead skin.
"Get your filthy hands off me."That was when the earth split in two with a deafening crack, and she lost her footing as she toppled backward into the crevice.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Adrian Lovett

The water bottle crackled as I emptied it. I made a satisfied exhale, feeling refreshed now that I had cleared my dry throat. The relief of a drink didn't last long though, as I looked at the three trashed bottles by my feet. That was the last of my supplies. Ones that I had nearly died to get.

Good thing I didn't have anything on my schedule. Today was going to be a scavenging day.

My joints popped as I got out of my sandy bed. Where was I going to explore today? To my right was the centipedes of death. Forward was the ocean, with that squid-octopus thing of death. I could always try the forest again... but the creepy feeling of being watched made me feel like I was going to die. So, to my left with more beach it was.

After double-checking my new leg stint, I made my way. The beach was still warming up with the newly risen sun. It created this serene, almost beautiful, feeling as I walked. I took a deep breath, feeling revitalized and refreshed just based on this one small moment. In the back of my mind, I still knew that this was too good to be true, and that the island still wanted to kill me. But I couldn't be bothered by it.

Even as I looked ahead where the beach slowly ended, I couldn't be bothered. I'm going into the trees? Sure thing, boss, let's go! Maybe this part of the trees was friendly? I shrugged to myself and slowly entered. Instantly, the temperature dropped a few degrees and I gave a small surprised shudder.

Except, I wasn't shaking for the sudden coolness. The feeling of being watched, the feeling of rage-filled eyes on the back of my neck returned. My heart definitely didn't seize up in my chest. And I definitely didn't stop dead in my tracks to do a quick 360 to find whatever was following me.

Nothing. There was absolutely nothing.

"Come on, get it together." I quietly scolded myself. My feet felt like lead as I began my trek forward.

The farther I went in, the colder the stare felt. Goosebumps popped up across my arms and no amount of rubbing would make them go away. So instead, I crossed my arms, and marched forward. I wasn't going to starve because I was too much of a coward. My pride had taken a few hits while being here, but no more. I wasn't a failure like my mother, or those weird frogs that sounded like her, thought. I had survived so far, and I didn't plan on stopping now.

Deep in my chest, I felt a spark ignite. Stubbornness and pride boiling my blood and invigorating my core. My strides became longer, and I puffed out my chest. Nothing was going to stop me now.

Crunch.

Except maybe that. I slowly craned my head down to look at what I had just crushed with my foot. A scream grew and died in my throat, making it burn with unused energy.

Below my foot, was a skull. Its forehead had caved in, and my heel was halfway inside of it. I jerked my foot out, and stumbled back a few steps. How had I not seen an entire pile of bones? Even ones that were...

Another scream died in my throat. It was a human's. I had seen enough true crime shows to know what a human skull looked like. Even ones that were half-crushed. It wasn't fresh either, the bones had nothing organic. No muscles clinging onto the white bones, or anything. I think the characters would say they were sun-bleached at this point.

Was... was I not the first one to be shipwrecked here?

Nausea washed over me as the implications hit me. I wasn't the first one here. Whoever this was didn't make it, especially not very far. If they couldn't, then what chance did I have in surviving much longer? My heart sank as my mind was swept lower and lower into a spiral of dark depression.

Snap.

I whipped around to see what had made the noise. My heart was pounding, and my mind was still reeling from the sudden revelations of this morning. I saw the blur of a foot, another human? It was so quick I couldn't be sure, but I hoped it was. Outside of all the near-death experience, I had grown a little lonely. There was no one to snark off to, no one to cheat and steal from, even in a playful manner.

My dreams were quickly dashed, when I heard a snarl. The human vocal chords aren't really made for growling or snarling. I took a step back, and the growl-like sound lessened. Whatever it was, it wanted me to go away.

"Alright. I'm going." I said. "Wait, you can't understand me, I'll just..."

I took a few more steps back. My eyes were still trained at where I swear I saw something. Another blur of motion, bringing my attention higher up and to the right. Instinctually, I brought up my hands. The growl grew louder, turning into a strangled bark.

"I'm leaving!" I barked back. The thing barked again, and I could see the edge of its face. It had a large, dark eye that was trained onto me. "Oh... hey, you're-"

The thing pounced. It was human alright, with wild, mangled hair. I fell onto my back, with this feral human on top of me. Their blunt nails and teeth still gnashed and clawed at me. I felt skin break as they ineffectively tried to tear me apart. I snarled right back and swung a left hook, catching them right in the jaw. They rolled away, and landed on all fours, lifting their face to snarl at me once more.

A feral child. They were old enough, or at least looked old enough, to have learned how to properly act and speak. Yet... they weren't. How long-

They tried to pounce again. My hands flew up, catching the feral child in the chest, and shoving them away. They rolled again, and I took those brief seconds to run for it.

I had been doing a lot of that lately, but hey, it kept working.

I didn't have to turn to know they were chasing me. The forest was an orchestra of noise as they dashed, smashed and crashed after me. Pain flared in my leg, and I cursed those stupid fucking bugs that had gotten me days ago. Except, when I tried to move. My leg muscles cramped, and I met so much resistances that I nearly fell from my own momentum.

I jerked my head down and was met by the sight of my ankle trying to be devoured by the feral child. It was almost as if they had unhinged their jaw just to make it fit. I shuddered, and jerked my leg trying to kick them off. They clamped on tighter, and flung their hands up to grip my leg. Their blunt nails dug into my skin.

I grunted in mild pain. How had this creature survived for as long as they had? Stubborn persistence?

Raising my other leg, I brought my knee to my chest, and stomped down. I caught their head with my heel and kicked their face right into the ground. I heard a painful pop as their triple death grip released. Wasting no time, I sprinted off.

I only stopped when I reached the beach. I turned to face the forest once more as I caught my breath. The feral creature didn't return. Good.

There really wasn't any place safe for me to explore without expecting death, was there?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MJ Williams

"No, Willow, listen to me. I've just had a brilliant idea, you're going to love it," MJ waffled on as trudged through the jungle, trailing closely behind Willow. "I think... We should have a couple's night with them!"

"What?" Willow spat. She did not even dignify that 'suggestion' with a look over her shoulder. "Why the fuck would we do that? We hate those shitheads."

As it happened, the women were taking a break from watching 'those shitheads' for a bit. All they did was mope and whine about how hard their lives were instead of realising how lucky they were to end up on such a nice location, and MJ was getting bored of it. They were still dead set on making their lives a living hell, but if MJ phrased it as 'looking for more death traps to lure the boys to', she could convince Willow to go on a nice bush walk with her. So, on this lovely afternoon, they were taking the opportunity to bush-bash through the area a bit more, with a special interest in exploring the area surrounding the sheer mountain at the heart of the island.

"But it would be so fun! And we'd beat the snot out of them in a game of charades."

Willow considered that despite herself, but quickly shook the idea from her head. "And in this crazy-person dimension you clearly come from where people live on the backs of turtles and friendly ghosts follow you around, when we just walk up to them and ask them to play charades with us, do they actually say yes?" MJ shrugged and nodded, not that Willow could see her. "Besides, I think they just broke up with each other, so they might not even be a couple anymore... And for that matter, we're not a couple either!" She pushed past a large branch and let it fling back at MJ.

MJ rolled her eyes as she caught the branch. Aren't they though? "But we are a couple of best friends and co-owners of an unexplored tropical island. I think that more than qualifies us to beat them at charades, or poker, or Trivial Pursuit. It doesn't matter, we would win whatever game they wanted to play."

Willow took some careful steps over a fallen log blocking the way. "And exactly how many couple's nights did you attend on your totally-real magical turtle island?"

"More than you'd think," MJ replied with a chuckle as she jumped over the log with a thud. "They're pretty easy to crash if you bring a strong enough bottle to share. And they're fun! Tipsy gossiping, wine tastings, bored suburban husbands and wives looking to spice things up with a hot blonde..."

Willow stopped in place and turned to stare daggers at MJ. "Gross." MJ responded with peals of giggles that were met with an angry Shhhh! from Willow.

"Not so loud, bitch! What if we're still being watched?" Her eyes darted around the trees, and she carefully started walking again.

"You're being paranoid again," MJ said, stomping loudly just to be irksome.

"I told you, it's not paranoia if you are actually being watched!"

"Shh, Willow, you're being very loud," MJ stage-whispered through a toothy grin. Willow groaned in response.

"I swear to God, one day I'm going to—"

"What's that?" MJ interrupted, pointing ahead of them. "Is that... Hey, wait for me!"

Willow had already silently darted ahead to where she was pointing, so MJ quickened her pace to keep up.

Within a minute, they had arrived at what was an unusual sight for a supposedly abandoned island. At the edge of this part of the forest was a sheer rock face, the bottom of a 10-metre-high cliff that made a harsh cut right through the plant life. But that was nothing unusual for this area, though. What was unusual was the fact that the small piece of jungle in front of them was stripped bare of flora except for the tall trees that stood within. No bushes, no ground cover, nothing to hide behind. However, that's not to say it was empty. Inside of this man-made clearing was all sorts of collected detritus one might expect to find washed up from the ocean; small crates, bits of wood and plastic, glass bottles, a lot of rubbish. Most of it looked aged, but some bits and pieces stood out as cleaner than the rest, most notably some pool toys and luggage cases that had been ripped open and had their contents strewn on the floor. Around the edges were scraggly, sharpened spears buried in the dirt pointing outwards, clearly serving as a menacing and rather convincing deterrent to onlookers. Strung around the clearing were lines of what looked like reeds plated into rope. Dangling from those were more rope, and hanging from those ropes were strings of clean bones layered on top of each other, like very creepy wind chimes. To top off the ominous aesthetic, splatters and pools of dried, red-brown blood were visible all throughout the area.

"This is new," piped up MJ.

Wordlessly, Willow crept up to the edge of the clearing and maneuvered around the spears. MJ followed her, trying to be silent but nevertheless catching a shoulder into one of the dangling bones-chimes. The bones knocked together, making as close to a jingling sounds that a pile of bones can be expected to make.

Willow put a finger up to her mouth and listening carefully to the air around them as MJ mouthed a 'sorry' to her. After an elongated moment of stillness, Willow partially relaxed. "Whoever made this isn't here for the moment," she whispered.

MJ looked around the well-trodden and littered floor. "Do you think someone lives here?"

"What else would explain this?"

The both started tiptoeing around, careful to avoid the blood stains. "Not... one of the others from the Prospero, right?" MJ's voice was quiet and shaky.

"It can't be. None of them would do this. Plus, all this stuff has been here much longer than we have."

They inspected the litter closely as they stepped around, picking things up and turning them over before placing them back carefully. MJ found a shiny pair of thick black glasses with a cracked lens. One of its arms was covered in coagulated, sticky blood.

MJ called out to Willow, keeping her voice down, "You know that comedian kid? The Irish one?" She gulped. "I think he's missing his glasses."

Willow didn't respond, too engrossed in inspecting the one untouched bush growing right up against the cliff. MJ put the glasses down and joined Willow as she pulled back the bush, revealing a tiny cave at the base of the rocks. MJ held back the bush so Willow could get down on all fours and have a good look inside. It was tiny, not taller than MJ's knee, and definitely not big enough for her to squeeze into (the very idea of which made MJ want to puke).

"It's deep," Willow echoed into the cave. "And pitch black, I can't see a thing in there."

"If you keep your head down there, you're going to get bitten by a snake," MJ remarked. She offered Willow a hand up.

Once Willow was upright again, she dusted herself off and gestured to the junk around them. "This is fucking creepy, and whoever's this is, I don't think we want to be around when they get back. We should leave for now and come back later when we're ready for a fight."

"What if they're friendly?" MJ asked, despite the feeling in her gut that it was very unlikely.

Willow gave her a look that MJ understood perfect: 'Even you're not that dumb'.

"Yeah, we should go—Ooh, what's that?"

Just sitting on the ground, small and inconspicuous but oddly separated from everything else, was a baby blanket. It was baby blue in colour, or was baby blue before the colour faded after years of exposure from the sun and dirt of the island, and was roughly folded over and lumpy, covering... something. MJ stopped and approached the blanket carefully, crouching down to feel the stiff material. She could just recognise the dancing hippopotamuses dotting the fabric. She could also feel something hard and irregularly shaped underneath the fabric. With Willow peering over her shoulder, MJ carefully unfolded the blanket.

It's not clear what MJ and Willow were expecting to see wrapped up in a baby blanket in a creepy lair on a supposedly deserted island. Human remains were probably not it.

Pale bones, tinted brown with age and completely devoid of flesh, were piled tightly together. At a glance, MJ could tell the bones weren't in a great state of repair. Most of the bones were missing chunks, and altogether it was only maybe half of a complete set. They all had gashes of different sizes, or places where they were snapped clean in half, or edges that had been ground down to nothing. Most striking in the pile was the human skull with a crater in its forehead.

"Fuck," MJ exhaled. "Do you think this could be someone from the cruise ship?"

Willow leant over and ran her fingers over the bones. "Can't be, they're too old." She pointed out some of the wounds on the bone. "See how the bone is paler where it's been damaged? They must have happened after the person died, like something attacked the bones." She picked up the skull and stood up, tracing the crater with a careful finger. MJ stood up as well and looked carefully at the skull. Willow continued, pointing at the crater, "See the colour here? I think this was done recently."

"Someone bashed in a dead person's skull?" MJ asked. "But still keeps their bones wrapped up in a blanket? That's kinda weird." She picked up the skull from Willow and turned it around in her own hands. "I think she was female."

"What? How would you know that?"

"Med school."

Willow gave her a look. "I'll give a pass on your Kevin bullshit, but there's no way you went to medical school."

MJ laughed lightly. "Yeah, nah, you're right. I have watched a couple episodes of Bones, though." Willow rolled her eyes, and MJ could just hear her laugh under her breath despite herself. "I guess the answer was not to be, huh?" she remarked as she passed the skull back to Willow.

Willow gently placed the skull back and wrapped up the blanket again before standing up and walking away. "We have to leave now, I don't want to spend any more time here without two more knives and a flare gun."

But MJ wasn't listening, because yet another thing had caught her eye. Something half-buried in the dirt, hidden by the blanket before they had disturbed it. Something shiny and plastic. MJ bent down to pick it up, yanking it out of the dirt. It was—

Fwip!

MJ flinched, not seeing the knife-shaped object that had just flown through the space where her head just was and was now clanging on the ground behind her. She didn't even see Willow move, but she was now behind her and holding the knife. Only two seconds had passed, but Willow was already grabbing her arm and pulling her behind a crate for cover. MJ pocketed the plastic object instinctively and scrambled into a crouch.

Willow signalled for MJ to stay, and she started creeping forward, her arm up and ready to through the knife. It was definitely a knife, MJ was sure, but not like any they'd ever seen. It was homemade, mostly and sharpened and curved rock with a wrapped leaf handle. It looked well used, in no small part because of the fresh blood splattered all over it.

The jungle was oddly silent around them, even the flora and fauna recognising the need to be still. MJ peered around the crate to see Willow carefully scrutinising the dense forest around them.

Seconds passed. No sound.

MJ made a call.

"Whoever's there, we don't want to hurt you!"

There was a tiny rustle in some bushes, just for a moment, but it was enough for Willow. With a deft flick of the wrist, she threw the knife with military precision into the bushes.

A high-pitched scream pierced the air, almost like a squeal, causing birds to fly away in the trees and animals to scatter. It lasted only a second, echoes filling the space where it used to be, and it was replaced with silence again. MJ and Willow looked at each other with wide eyes and ran forward. They both knew there was no way that scream belonged to an adult.

And they were right. Peering over the bush that Willow had thrown the knife at, back up against the based of a thick tree, was a kid, a young girl curled up into herself. She was utterly filthy, her skin caked with layers of grime and her long dark hair a giant tangled mess on her back. She was wearing an oversized shirt cleaner than she was, probably a find from the wreckage of the Prospero. It was hard to say if she was a big 6-year-old or a small 12-year-old. She was cradling her right hand into her chest while breathing fast and shallow breaths. MJ couldn't read her expression, the girl's eyes watching the two women like a hawk.

"Fuck, it's a kid," Willow whispered.

"Are you okay, sweetheart?" MJ asked the girl.

The girl didn't move, her eyes darting between the two.

"I don't think she speaks English," Willow muttered.

"Hmm." MJ very slowly moved around the bush and crouched in front of the girl to be on her level, her hands open in front of her. "Hey mate," she said slowly, with as soothing and quiet a voice she could. "My name's Mary Jane, and this is my friend Willow. Can you tell me your name?"

The girl said nothing.

"No? You don't have a name? That's okay, names are overrated anyway. Is anyone with you?"

Again, no response, but her eyes were fixed on MJ. They were wide, and wild, twitching slightly at MJ's words.

"You know, you have a very impressive throwing arm," MJ smiled. "You nearly took my head clean off back there... Feeling shy today, huh? That's alright." MJ noticed the blood trickling down the girl's arm. "You're hurt aren't you? Can you show me your hand?" MJ asked, as she mimed holding out her own hand to show the girl.

The girl scrunched her nose at the movement, a flash of anger on her face.

"We can help you," MJ whispered, reaching her arm out slowly, palm facing up.

This was not the right move. The girl changed in front of them, her face twisting into a snarl and an animalistic hiss escaping her lips. She scratched at MJ's hand, which MJ withdrew immediately. MJ clutched her own hand as the girl bared her teeth and growled like an angry dog.

"Crikey, that hurt. You've got sharp nails, don't you? Ow. Okay, no touching. I get it."

The girl's eyes darted up to something in the tree canopy above them, and then back down with silent determination. Before Willow could jump in to stop her, the girl grabbed the knife tucked behind her with her good hand. MJ just caught a glance of a small white-beaded bracelet knotted into the girl's hair as she threw the knife directly upwards into the tree.

"What was that for—"

"MJ, wasps!"

Down from the tree fell the largest beehive MJ had ever seen, and it's cranky tenants were already showing their angry heads in droves.

In no time flat, MJ and Willow were sprinting through the jungle screaming bloody murder and swatting stinging wasps from themselves. They didn't stop running until they were nearly home at the cave.

When they did stop, they were bent over, panting and rubbing at the wasps stings already swelling under their skin.

"There was a kid living here this whole time?" Willow yelled. "How did we miss that? Is she why I've felt like I was being watched? Has she been making me paranoid since we set foot on this island!?"

MJ wheezed a laugh. "No, you've always been paranoid. You can't blame that one the poor girl."

"Poor girl? What if she was the one who killed that person? She nearly killed you, dammit!"

"I don't think she killed whoever those bones belonged to..." Suddenly, MJ remembered the object she picked up near the bones. She fished into her pocket and pulled it out.

A white-beaded bracelet, just like the one the girl had. She rubbed the dirt from the beads, ignoring the itching sensation growing all over her arms and legs and neck. Would you look at that, MJ thought. The beads had letters on them, which spelt out—

MJs stomach sunk like a lead balloon inside her and a wave of coldness spread from her chest through her legs and arms.

"And why not!?" asked Willow with a huff, too busy focusing on her own stings to notice MJ frozen beside her.

MJ swallowed the quickly growing lump in her throat and laughed nervously. "I found this near the bones, she had one just like it." She held the bracelet out to Willow, who plucked it from her imperceptibly shaking hands.

"M-O-M-M-Y," Willow spelt out. She handed the plastic jewellery back to MJ. "So you think the bones were her mum?"

"Yeah," MJ nodded, her voice steady but soft. She started absent-mindedly walking in the direction of the cave, her eyes drawn to the bracelet. Willow rushed up to keep in step with her.

"So what the fuck are we going to do about the girl?"

"Not sure," MJ muttered.

"Well we need to do something, she is clearly dangerous and probably plotting our own deaths as we speak."

"Mm."

Willow looked up at her friend's face with a quizzical expression. "I don't know if you've ever missed an opportunity to call me paranoid before."

"What about that time in Denmark?" MJ asked with a half-hearted smile.

"Doesn't count, your tongue was anesthetised. Are you feeling okay?"

"Don't worry about it, I'm fine. You know, I just feel a little crook," MJ said, waving her friend off. "I might go lie down for a bit."

Willow gave her a suspicious look, but seemingly let it go with a slow nod. The two walked the rest of the way back in an unusual but peaceful silence.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Willow Zheng

"Just let me stick my toe in," MJ wheedled, fidgeting on her toes and looking for all the world like a middle-schooler sitting by the public pool on the first day of summer. And then Willow was forced to slap her foot away when she actually tried to stick her toe in, because apparently her best friend had been born without a survival instinct in a literal survival situation. Before them, the water of the hot spring bubbled cheerfully; dappled sunlight played across the moving water, giving the rippling surface the impression of a stained glass window. A deceptively beautiful stained glass window. A dangerous stained glass window. An evil stained glass window. One that could kill them. Was this what MJ called her unnecessary paranoia? Willow sniffed cautiously; the barest whiff of sulphur melding with the heavy puffs of steam rising from the spring suggested no.

"No." And yet she hadn't actually turned up anything to stop MJ from sticking her toe in (or straight-up dunking her head in, which she'd suggested a few days earlier to Willow's extreme displeasure). The temperature hadn't turned out to be dangerously hot or cold, and closer examination hadn't found it to be unstable on the way down or prone to blasts from its source; the water's chemical makeup itself seemed safe no matter whether she tested it with the tools from the med kit or went the straightforward submerged Sharkbait (the test itself had probably been the most dangerous part of the entire process, and that was more thanks to the murder bird than anything else). If anything, the mineral content would make it beneficial, although MJ didn't need to know that lest she start free-diving. Sulfur wasn't technically inherently bad, and the tested concentration didn't suggest any foul side effects; people paid for that shit. General hot spring knowledge knocked out a few big fears—constant natural replenishment of the water plus the higher temperature meant no fish and, more importantly, no giant squid—and the limited aquatic plant life seemed harmless too. The spring itself wasn't too deep to be dangerous nor too shallow to be useless, but—

"You need to stop." There was nothing like being flicked in the forehead to take her out of her thoughts. MJ frowned, putting her hands on her hips and blowing a strand of curly hair out of her face with a frustrated sigh. "You have been testing this water for two days. There are literally no more things that can be wrong with water. You have thought of everything. More to the point, I am sick of taking spit baths." She scowled with the ferocity of a woman facing down war and, in one dramatic motion, whipped her jacket off and tossed it into the spare grass carpeting the forest floor. "I am going in, and if I die, it is my time to die and I die with honor."

...Well, she probably wouldn't die. Besides, Willow was ready to grudgingly admit that there was very little left to test (and also that she'd actually risk death to wash the sand out of her hair properly, and also that she'd actually take death before she admitted that to anyone). "On your own head be it." It was freshwater, too, although she wasn't, like, going to drink it. Willow dumped the stolen tin cup of test water into the roots of a nearby tree, watching it seep between the roots into the ground, and then promptly turned to see MJ ripping off her hole-riddled shirt like something out of a Magic Mike movie. "PUT SOME CLOTHES ON, WOMAN!"

"What the hell are you talking about?" MJ turned to give Willow a look of genuine confusion, and then kept ripping off her shirt. There was not a bra under the shirt. "I figured you wouldn't want me to get our disgusting clothing into the bath water—cross-contamination or whatever, although listen, if we did we could technically wash ourselves and our clothes at the same time—"

"JUST STOP BEING NAKED!" Oh God. There had to be things to look at other than naked MJ. The sky. Willow looked up and belatedly realized she could only see snatches of the sky through the leaves canopying the spring. The trees. Except then MJ tossed a piece of her destroyed shirt into the tree. People did this willingly? The Michelsons did this of their own volition?! There was another tearing sound, and then what was probably a pant leg hit a clump of dark red foliage directly in Willow's view and slid off with a sad, deflated whisper. There was no underwear under those pants. "STOP! Oh my God, what are you doing?!"

"...Dude, I think we're past this." MJ snickered from way too close and then walked into Willow's field of vision like it was no big deal. "...Actually, haven't we been through this before? We've been naked around each other already!"

Oh, like Willow would ever be able to forget such a traumatic experience. "That was different!"

"Montenegro?"

"We were wearing body paint, that didn't count." Why weren't her hands bigger? Why weren't MJ's privates smaller?!

"Manila."

"At least you carried a leaf that time!" Leaves! Those were the answer! Willow snatched up a leaf and held it out blindly, only for MJ to take it and toss it over her shoulder and yep that was a boob. Those were two boobs. That was—nope. "Leaves, MJ! Put on the leaf!"

"There were no leaves on the Isle of Mann!"

"Yeah, well, the Wiccans wouldn't let us into the Beltane brunch unless we left our earthly impurity at the door—"

"Willow, it's a boob, it's not going to kill you!" How did MJ know that, it's not like she knew what her boobs were thinking. "Actually, you know what, they'll only kill you if you let them. How has no assassin ever just tried to murder you by stripping down? You'd never be able to face them. You'd probably off yourself first."

...In retrospect, that was actually a pretty obvious and downright embarrassing weakness to have. Willow lowered her fingers a fraction of an inch and NOOOOOOOOOPE. Everyone had phobias and apparently hers were people's privates. People whipped them out for fun? Sex? Where was the humanity? And weren't Willow's assassins allegedly a figment of her paranoid imagination or whatever, anyway? How was MJ planning on dying with quote-unquote honor if she died tits-down-ass-up for a quick swim? "Just—just get in the fucking spring and never do this to me again."

"Aye, aye." Willow kept her hands up in front of her, looking up toward the heavens in silent prayer and shaking her head as she heard the soft splash of MJ slipping into the water with a gusty, relieved sigh. "Oh. Yep. This is the shit. I haven't had a bath in forever." From the sounds of it, MJ was also learning about her infinite capacity for love. Or, alternatively, getting a little too sexual with the hot spring. "Ahhhh. It's so warm. This is the tits."

"Please. I am begging you." Stop talking about tits. Was this a cultural thing? What had she expected out of defecting to America?! MJ was the only good thing to come out of western civilization, and even that was currently debatable. "Alright, turn around so I can get naked."

"Yeah, I'm not gonna do that." MJ's voice was a low, lazy murmur that could barely be heard over the ambient bubbling of the water and the smooth rustling of the trees flanking the spring. "Privacy is a social construct and body consciousness was invented by the patriarchy. The steam's too heavy to see anything through anyway. Also, I think my muscles just melted out of my pores and into this water and I'm never moving from this exact location ever again ever." Willow lowered her hands carefully; MJ peered at her judgmentally over the lip of the near rock, her nose barely skimming the surface of the water. "Besides, I have seen you naked before."

Oh, like Willow hadn't been trying desperately to forget. "Not like this!"

"Sapporo."

"We were separated by a folding screen the entire time."

"Bolivia."

"I had my underwear on, it's not like they require you to get naked when you're getting a massage. Wait, were you naked under that sheet?!"

"Okay, so what about that street market chase in Kabul?"

"...Are you sure I was there for that one?"

"I feel like I definitely wasn't running from Interpol naked because I didn't know how to put on a burqa with anyone else."

There were so many things wrong with that sentence, starting with the fact that the best way to blend in as a woman in Afghanistan was not to wear a burqa. Any international agent with half a brain would realize that, and Willow especially was never living it down after that incident in Kabul where she'd—oh. Maybe she had been there? "Well, good. If you had any other international spy friends you were going on the lam with I guess I'd be hurt."

"See? We're close. We're there. Our friendship has reached that point." MJ ducked her head briefly underwater, her curls fanning out loose and wild in the form of a writhing shadow just beneath the surface before she went up legs first floating on her back and yep her boobs were out of the water. "We're more married than the Michelsons are at this point, let's be honest: at least we understand the concept of committing to a damn idea. Now take off your damn clothes and get into this totally platonic friend bath with me, dammit."

The lack of recent Michelson cave sex would've been gratifying, if it hadn't been replaced by sarcasm and heavily passive-aggressive sniping audible from inside the cave. At least cave sex was white noise if you tried hard enough. Willow had to pay attention to sarcasm. "Fine." What was the worst thing MJ would do, anyway? Tell Sharkbait about how small her boobs were? God, Willow hoped not. "Can you close your eyes, at least?"

"Sure, sure, whatever." With an exaggerated groan, MJ lifted a dripping hand out of the water and slapped it with a squelch over her eyes; Willow tentatively took off her shirt, abruptly realized other survivors might stumble across her at any time, took off her pants a little faster, reached the conclusion the Michelsons might walk by with their relationship problems, and slingshotted her clothing into the nearest tree before jack-knifing into the spring. A stupid idea, as it turned out, because in her haste she totally forgot that the spring wasn't that deep; her foot hit something hard at the bottom, pain shooting up through her leg. Luckily, when she pried her foot into her hand and out of the water into a patch of wavering sunlight, it looked like she hadn't split her toenail open. See, this is what nudity got you. Willow was right to be distasteful. Paranoid. Scared. Whatever.

"So?" MJ paddled up to Willow. Her excited grin combined with her curls, dark and plastered flat against her scalp, made her look for all the world like an excited puppy. "Pretty neat, right?"

Ignoring the slightest probability of lingering undetectable death and the pain in her foot, Willow had to admit that the hot spring was, in fact, the tits; after the itchiness of their sand-covered clothing and the general griminess built up after a long week of spit baths, the enveloping warmth of hot water was a fucking godsend. She could practically feel the salt and sweat melting off her, finally submerged in a body of water that wouldn't burn her if she kept her eyes open or accidentally got it in her mouth. Heat wrapped around her with gentle pressure, swaddling like a maternal hug. Her foot settled from outright rebellion into a dull throb. And she couldn't see any naked people anymore through the distorted water, herself or otherwise. The tits, indeed. "Yeah." What the hell, there probably weren't Michelsons around and Cthulhu couldn't climb onto dry land, she could afford to close her eyes. "And, provided we don't die and this water isn't secretly acid because my bones are also definitely melting, we can keep coming back here for the forsee—"

"WOAH!" And, because the universe's day job was dunking on Willow's dreams and she wasn't allowed to have nice things for five seconds, MJ hollered right into her ear. Willow instinctively flailed her arms in the water to catch herself, but since it was water all she really accomplished was kicking up a fine spray of crystalline water and nearly drowning herself. And then, because Willow couldn't have normal problems like rent or relationship issues, no, she had to have big problems like shipwrecks and government conspiracies and, apparently, tribal burial ground death cenotes: "is that a human skull?"

Alas, the sort of problem that probably couldn't be dealt with while relaxing in the water with her eyes closed. Willow opened her eyes. It was, indeed, a human skull. Perfect. At least her passable familiarity with human skulls allowed her to be less horrified than most; MJ looked apprehensive, holding the skull at arms length and about ready to bolt out of the water despite her early assertion about never leaving ever. As if things like death could be allowed to ruin the one stroke of good luck they'd had since getting to the island. "Seems so." So that was what she'd hit when she dived in; her foot must have dislodged it from whatever it had been trapped under at the bottom of the spring. "Hm." She pinched her nose, kicked herself a little higher, and let herself sink down into the depths of the water—her toenails skittered against the rocky bottom roughly, occasionally catching against crags in the rock but otherwise meeting nothing of resistance. The pressure began pushing insistently in her chest; she reemerged with a gasp as water sluiced off her shoulders, licking her lips clean. So much better than swimming in salt water. "No other skeletons down there. If I had to take a guess, I'd say someone chucked it down there after the body was already decomposed." Either that, or she'd made a grave mistake and they were both about to die in the water. Whatever. She wasn't leaving. Willow stretched out her arms for the skull and MJ pushed it over gladly; it bobbed slowly towards her for a few long seconds, the spotty sunlight bright ivory on the flat plane of the frontal bone. "Hm. Wisdom teeth says they're an adult. If I had to guess—and this is a guess, I don't know how long that thing's been in the water—I'd say it's been dead for a few years?"

"...We've been swimming in DEAD PERSON WATER?!"

That was what MJ got out of the entire analysis? Willow's training was officially garbage. "It's old dead person water, we'll live." Operatively speaking. They'd die eventually, but not from the water. Satisfied with that conclusion, Willow let it go, nudging it back towards MJ; the skull wobbled in the water, tilting its own balance face-up. MJ floated away from it, giving Willow an injured look. "What? I'm not going to take it out, someone obviously put it there for a reason." Someone who was dead, probably, or Willow felt relatively confident they would've run across some sign of them by now, although that seemed like a fact to spare MJ from, since she was already looking mildly perturbed at the prospect of one death. "Hey, maybe we could give it to the Michelsons. I bet they could talk out their marriage problems at it. Therapists do that all the time." With puppets instead of skulls, but they'd serve the same purpose. Hadn't she seen that in a TV show once?

"Like in Hamlet, right? He talks out his problems at the skull, which helps him...murder his family and end up dead? No, that can't be right." MJ reluctantly grabbed the skull as it nudged against her shoulder, propping it upright in her hand and lifting it into the air. Water trickled out of her hand, shining brightly in the hints of sunlight. "Is that a dagger I see before me?"

"No, that's a skull and that's Macbeth. To be or not to be, that is the question." Whether t'is nobler in the mind to suffer, yadda yadda yadda. Come to think of it, that was actually the soliloquy of a different scene; the Chinese government hadn't exactly been in a hurry to teach her Shakespeare, beyond its use in encrypting and decrypting coded messages at dead drops. Westerners. They thought everyone was as isolated in their cultural bubble as they were. Willow had once faced down an agent code-named Yorick, actually. "Besides, let's be honest, we're in The Tempest more than anything else—"

"Counter: Midsummer Night's Dream." MJ switched the skull into her other hand, keeping it half-submerged in the bubbling water as she ticked the points off her fingers. "We're wandering the forest; shit be wild, yo; there are four of us—"

Well, there had been five before Colombo died and there were probably more survivors out there, but more importantly: "if you're suggesting we're all with the wrong people and we're supposed to get with them, I will drown you myself." That being said, she was definitely calling dibs on Danny. At least he could probably shut his trap and keep up.

"Well, they're definitely not with the right people—hang on." MJ turned, eyes narrowing. "Where the hell did our backpacks go?"

Aaaaaand there was her migraine and her neck twinge again. Comparative relaxation had been nice while it lasted. Willow turned, checking to see whether MJ was looking at the wrong tree or rock or nondescript mushroom clump; no sign of their clothes or their belongings. She turned expectantly to look at the nondescript mushroom clump on the other side.

...No sign of their clothes or their belongings.

"Hang on." Two seconds ago she'd thought it would be impossible to be stressed in a hot spring. Just once, just once, she wanted to be right. The universe owed her that much. She looked again. Her eyes were going. They had to be, because any other alternative was going to end with her offing herself. "They're somewhere. They're—"

There was a sound. A sound that sounded a whole effing lot like a giggle.

Willow turned toward MJ so fast the water churned and whipped her in the face, because retaliation and Murphy's Law. "I swear to God, Sheila, if this is your idea of a joke—"

"If anything it'd be a lesson on how unnecessary paranoia makes things worse, not a joke—and stop looking at me like that, it wasn't me!" The not-Australian's brow furrowed as she did a three-sixty again just to make sure, handing the skull to Willow as she treaded water with her hands. "But I don't get it; if it was an animal or something, we would've heard—"

There was an abrupt rustling overhead. Simultaneously, both Willow and MJ threw their heads back to look up; the thick palm fronds shifted.

"...So that isn't good—"

"You think?"

The leaf shifted a little more and a pale expression appeared tentatively over the edge, wide blue doe eyes bright in a grimy face. Mud-caked, frazzled hair the color of leather billowed around her head like a tangled cloud.

"...Shit."

"Think that's another survivor?"

Not one they'd seen on the cruise ship, if so, but then again Willow hadn't been taking her job seriously enough to bother learning people's names or faces or registering their presences. Still, that was hardly her main concern when she was sitting in a hot spring right under the place where a presumably heavy child who was anywhere in the range of an extremely mature-looking ten-year-old to an extremely baby-faced sixteen-year-old could fall on her head at any second, very wet and very naked, and then she'd have the unfortunate distinction of being murdered naked in a hot spring. Still, it's not like she had plenty of options or anything. She cupped her hand over her mouth. "Hey, kid! Get down from there!"

Rather than doing the same herself, MJ just grabbed Willow's hand by the arm and hauled it over to cup MJ's mouth, shouting up herself. "Didja see what happened to our stuff, while you're at it?"

The girl stared at them for a long second, twitching her upturned nose and betraying nothing with her thin, pursed mouth. Then, abruptly, she stretched out her hand, dangling their backpack above their head in a single clenched, pudgy fist.

"What—" Willow's mind instantly screamed secret agent, but—no, that wouldn't make sense. The girl was too quiet to be a normal kid, but less in the instantly recognizable I trained under a waterfall in the Tibetian mountains because my 老师 was a sadist who believed in teaching Taoist stoicism through pain and also am the night, fear me way and more in the I've had neither the ability nor opportunity to interact and also am lonely and don't know human interaction, pity me way. Willow had seen kids raised in captivity before, and this one seemed feral-adjacent rather than calmly controlled, although it was hard to pinpoint and impossible to make judgements at a glance. Also, they were in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere and none of that shit mattered, Willow, when she had her backpack dangling at a cool out of reach number of feet. "—give that back!"

A second hand, skin tanned nut-brown, emerged from behind the tree and performed a very rude and unnecessarily complicated gesture. It wasn't fuck you in any language Willow recognized, but it was pretty hard to mistake the level of force involved behind that particular arm movement.

"Why, you little—" Children these days. No respect for their elders. Willow gathered up as much authority as her years of filial piety could muster, narrowed her eyes, and tried very hard not to think about the fact that she was very naked and had no weapons. The hands, backpack, and head all disappeared; a second later, the girl appeared from behind a nearby tree with the scraping sound of cloth against tree bark, landing with a ruffle of disturbed leaves in the space between the gnarled roots. "Put that down at once, young lady!"

The feral child let go of the tree trunk and dropped heavily, as if her legs couldn't carry her, onto all fours; she scrambled closer, hands scraping up flecks of mulch, before sitting upright like a well-behaved dog on a nearby rock. Up close, it was easy to see a twisted scar slashed across a single cloudy eye. Her shirt was the only stitch of clothing she was wearing (and yet, alas, still more than Willow), almost impeccably clean save for a few patches of discoloration and fraying thread along the sleeve—a promotional t-shirt recognizable from the Prospero's gift shop emblazoned with the company logo and the lettering I LIKE BIG BOATS AND I CANNOT LIE. Willow and MJ's supply backpack sagged off her shoulder onto the moist rocks by the spring with a wet slap.

The child pointed to the skull in MJ's hand and slapped the stone underfoot heavily with an angry glare. You first.

MJ went to lower the skull into the water so that it bobbed back nto the spring, but Willow snatched it back up with narrowed eyes. Rule One: trust no bitch. "Hand it over." The girl must have put the skull in the spring, then; she must've been there at least as long as the skull had. Probably longer, taking into account the idea that she must have been acquainted with...whoever the skull had been before. Willow wagged the skull at her, as if the skeleton was shaking its head disapprovingly. The girl's upper lip twitched away, baring teeth. "Uh-uh, I don't think so. Put down our stuff, and then I'll give it to you."

The girl cocked her head for a long second, staring blankly as if entirely confused. Right when Willow considered attempting further communication via mime (although really, how was she supposed to non-verbally communicate drop your hostages or I swear to God I will yeet mine to kingdom come), the girl flung the backpack toward the two survivors with a limp but forceful motion, as if she were a puppet with her arm jerked forward suddenly by a string. The pack skittered across the wet ground so quickly that Willow barely had time to propel herself off MJ's chest with a yelp, ignoring her friend's strangled shout of indignation and stopping the pack before it slid right into the water. The skull, let go in her panic, spun wildly through the current of the bubbling hot spring before MJ managed to grab it by the tooth and set it calmly down on the stone in front of the child as if in offering.

"There." Willow breathed deeply, trying to catch her breath as the girl tentatively got off her haunches and approached the skull; up close, Willow could smell the musky stench of accumulated body odor and jungle stink coming off her in clouds every time she moved. The girl prodded the skull with a calloused hand, face still expressionless, before snatching it up in flat, calloused palm and loping back to her position on the rock. "...Happy?" Thumbs up? No, that wouldn't mean anything. Willow settled for stretching her face into a wide smile before cocking her head curiously, hoping that would get the message across. If the side-eye MJ gave her was any indication, the combination of smiling and her no-doubt murderous glare wasn't doing her any favours.

The girl stared at them for a long second before abruptly giving Willow an impish grin, reaching under her shirt and yanking something out. Some sort of bundle? A pile of rags? More promotional t-shirts—the ones that said TIME TO GET SHIP-FACED?

"...No." No, no, no. The corner of one of the pieces of fabric slipped out of the girl's grip, unfolding halfway down so that a single pant leg trailed in the water. Those were their clothes. Those were her clothes. Those were all that stood between her and the jungle. "No, you fucking don't."

The girl turned, feet sending up a spray of water from where they collected in the rocks, before scampering away into the forest on all fours with a howl of laughter. In contrast, by the time Willow finally managed to get her slippery hands to properly grip the rocks and haul herself out of the spring naked as the day she was born, the girl was already disappearing into the darkness of the jungle, using every rock and tree along the way to springboard herself further and further into the darkness with expertise that came only from practice. Curse Willow's relaxed limbs—the hot springs were evil. A trap. Her training was useless. All that time sitting under waterfalls and no one had bothered teaching her how to be raised in the wild. Why hadn't her parents abandoned her in the mountains?! "No, you FUCKING DON'T!"

"Oh, so now you're not body-conscious." Willow heard the splash of MJ emerging from the hot springs with a sigh, sounding distinctly unconcerned about the fact that their only set of workable clothes had been stolen by a child mastermind who would presumably use them to piss-mark her territory or strangle them in their sleep or something else that went against the laws of nature and didn't involve wearing them, and oh, God, Willow was not going to stroll around the island butt-naked. There were centipedes. There were giant squids. There were Michelsons. She took off at a run as MJ's laugh followed behind her, wincing as grit bit unevenly at her feet. Before her, the foundling's footsteps were getting clearer and clearer against the ground as they descended deeper and deeper into swampy territory. The smell of sulfur got progressively worse. The kid's wide, splayed footprints and handprints lay deep against the cold, wet forest floor; goosebumps prickled at Willow's (very naked, don't fucking think about it) wet skin as purpling mud squelched up between her toes. She screeched to a shivering halt before a tree with roots spreading deep into the murky darkness of a wide, wet marsh. Stark smudges of fresh mud spiralled the old trunk upwards; sure enough, wet sludge dripped onto WIllow's forehead. When she looked upward, the kid was there, sitting on a branch higher than she had any right to be on. The end of Willow and MJ's clothing dangled tantalizingly in the stiff breeze, wrapped firmly around the girl's hand where it lay rested atop the branch. As MJ finally came to a leisurely stop, completely unashamed in her nakedness, Willow watched the water stain spread along the fabric.

"Alright." MJ sucked on her teeth as she squinted upwards while Willow desperately tried to arrange her hands around herself, struggling towards some semblance of modesty. It didn't work. That little fucker was going to pay. Willow looked despairingly to MJ for backup and validation, but unfortunately MJ seemed more amused than anything else, looking up with a smile at the feral child that came suspiciously close to respect and suspiciously closer to maternal pride. The kid cocked her head in a bird-like motion, swaying her weight back and forth, before seemingly dropping again only to swing upside down on the branch by her knees. Her hair remained stiffly upright, defying gravity; the clothes dropped tantalizingly lower. Willow made a fruitless grab, to which both her companions cackled as her fingers brushed the hem of her pants. Traitor. "How are we gonna get them back?"

"We could murder her." Well. "We could've murdered her if we'd brought our fucking backpack—"

"Stop being so edgy." MJ rolled her eyes, crossing her arms—under her boobs, as opposed to over them, because no one cared about Willow and her poor heart and her traditional sensibilities. God. She couldn't be the only one who thought the island had more nudity than necessary. "Maybe we should just...say please?"

"I'm not gonna fucking say please to that fucker." Willow jabbed an accusing finger toward the girl, who swung herself unperturbed back and forth on the branch as the front of her shirt rode lower and lower down her legs, completely oblivious to the fact they were discussing her right in front of her smarmy, underwear-stealing face. Thankfully, the back was still trapped between her knees. Too much nudity on this goddamn island. "First off, I don't negotiate with goddamn terrorists. That's just, like, negotiation one-oh-one. And terrorist one-oh-one. Terrorist negotiation one-oh-one: don't do it." The swamp behind the tree burbled menacingly and offered up a pocket of sulfuric air with a large bubble and a throaty belch. The girl giggled. "Second off, she probably doesn't understand English—"

"Yes." The foundling abruptly lifted her head, using a single hand to haul herself upright, gripping the branch like a sloth and fixing Willow with a malicious smile she was unaccustomed to seeing on anyone except Sharkbait. Oh. Oh no. This girl was one of them. The girl was part of that subgenus of species that seemed innocent and harmless while secretly plotting Willow Zheng's downfall. When the child talked, she moved her lips around the syllables as if trying to fit something too big into her mouth; they came out with a stuttering accent borne more from disuse than uncertainty, although not one that could be pinned down to any particular location. She gave them both an impish, gap-toothed grin, lifting her hanging hand—the one with their combined clothes now bundled around it—and pointing it toward MJ with a vigorous nod. "S-say...please."

"...Well, you heard her, MJ. Say please."

"Oh, she's talking to you, mate." On cue, the girl bobbed her head with a vigorous nod, swinging herself cheerfully on her branch. Those motherfuckers. "Go on, say it."

Every instinct Willow had ever possessed and a few new ones that had been manufactured purely from the sheer lunacy of their situation screamed at her to take matters into her own hands, scale the tree through sheer force of will, and commit some extremely cathartic homicide. Unfortunately, the cells in her body took one look at the tree and seized up, reminding her that she was still very naked and there were humans around and she needed to suit up right the fuck now. A small voice in the back of her brain tried to make the argument that all she had to do was say a few words and that words, supposedly, couldn't hurt her, which was just plain stupid and wrong.

She grit her teeth, summoned up the impenetrable wall of stoicism that had gotten her through the waterfalls in Tibet, and tilted her aching neck up to look at the casually swinging child. "...Please."

The child brought her wrapped hand to her lip, tapping her cheek as she fixed her eyes on a point above Willow's head. She turned around—and there was Sharkbait in the next tree over, smiling over at the kid with paternal approval and watching Willow with sadistic glee. Oh. My. God. The kid thought for a long moment before turning back with an innocent smile. "...Pretty please?"

"Pretty please will you return my damn clothes right fucking now." She spat the words in as much of a rush as possible before she changed her mind and wired her own mouth shut. Alas, the menacing growl did not improve the situation or her mood; her clothes remained unreturned.

"Pretty, pretty please?" The child added with a giggle.

"With a big fat cherry on top, if you want it." Sarcasm was wasted on this girl. Cherries were wasted on her. She probably didn't even know what cherries were. This was officially the most humiliating thing that had ever happened to her. Gassing herself on accident had been bad and running through a cave on fire with MJ sitting on her shoulders had been bad but this, shivering wet and entirely naked in the forest while she tried to bargain terms with a child for her basic human decency and lost. This was the worst. Her training was a waste. She had made deals with international governments for her own immunity and she couldn't even negotiate terms with a teenager. Kids were the devil. "Pretty, pretty please. There, I said it. Now will you pretty, pretty please give me my clothes back NOW?!"

"...Pretty, pretty, pretty please?"

"For the love of—PRETTY, PRETTY, PRETTY, PRETTY, PRETTY PLEASE WILL YOU GIVE ME BACK MY CLOTHES ALREADY?!" Her frustrated, anguished scream came out so inadvertently loudly that Sharkbait squawked and a flock of birds left the forest somewhere in the far distance. Distinctly, Willow heard another survivor exclaim 'what the fuck?!' with emphatic feeling from somewhere blessedly far away. MJ, the traitor, howled so hard with laughter she fell back and left a big fat butt print in the ground. The child laughed in the face of Willow's frustration. It fueled her amusement. "Come on, kid, what the fuck else do you want from me?! You have the clothes off my back and the last shred of my dignity! I have nothing else to give! Just—give me my clothes. Give me my clothes. Please. Please. Pretty, pretty, pretty please!" What was she going to do with the clothing, anyway?! At least if she'd kept their backpack for supplies Willow would understand it. The foundling giggled, adjusting her grip on the branch before hauling herself back into a sitting position, swinging her legs happily as she fiddled for a second and unwrapped the bundle of clothing swaddling her hand.

"Yep, think you finally pretty, pretty pleased her." MJ scrambled back to her feet, gasping for air through her occasional choked laughs and wiping streaks of mud from her hands onto her abdomen. She looked up as the kid kept sifting through the remnants of their clothes. "I don't need mine, personally, since I ripped my shirt into pieces—it was falling apart anyway—"

"I think we've already established that you're not the one with the problem being butt naked," Willow shot back waspily, at the end of her tether as she watched the kid with hawk-like eyes. Why wasn't she throwing down the clothes yet? "All I want. Is to cover my privates. And forget that all of this happened." She rounded abruptly on her friend. "You hear that, MJ? This never happened."

"Sure, sure." MJ waved a hand in the air and very pointedly did not listen to a single damn word she was saying. "And while we're at it, can I just say, watching you run naked through the woods screaming bloody murder at a pre-teen is the best thing that's never happened to me—"

Something landed on Willow's head: a thin strip of fabric. Up in the tree, the child chortled and began wrapping her hand again.

"..." Willow reached up slowly, a curious feeling of calm detachment washing over her like ice water. She couldn't even be angry, because this wasn't happening, because it was too surreal to be happening, and if it wasn't happening she couldn't be angry about it because it wasn't fucking happening. She pinched the cloth between her fingers and let it slide slowly off her head, holding it out in front of her—MJ's grimy red bandana.

"...I mean, it'll probably fit over your—"

"No." Not today, Satan. This was not happening. This was not happening. "NO!" Her body moved seemingly independently of her will; she threw forward like a woman possessed and kicked the tree as hard as she could, driving her foot viciously into the root at the base. First numbness burst in her foot, followed immediately by pain so hard she buckled to the forest floor, scraping her knees against the bark as her feet reflexively clenched and unclenched from the burn and scrabbled for purchase. She grabbed the trunk with vicious force and a scream that was half-pain and half-pure frustration: the last wrench did it, the tree shaking and tilting just abruptly enough that the strange girl's eyes widened in surprise as her balance slipped from the high branch. For a second she fought to recover, but her bare feet slipped against the trunk and she listed off her perch with a cut-off scream as she disappeared with a gloopy, sludgy splash into the foul-smelling swamp, splattering marsh-slime all over MJ and Willow.

There was a long moment of shocked silence as the ripples faded from the surface of the swamp and the mud cooled on their skin.

"...Uh—"

The girl exploded out of the water with a gasp of air, buried under a heavy coating of slime, throwing around thick layers of goop everywhere as she splashed toward the far shore of the swamp with a burst of noxious stench and toxic-looking waves of brown and green sludge. She scrambled onto the far shore with her usual graceless but efficient tangle of limbs, making a gesture that looked suspiciously like a salute with the bundled hand; from that distance, Willow could see the glint of her white smirk before she bounded back into the jungle, leaving a thick trail of slime in her wake.

"...We're not following her, are we?"

"Yes." A curious feeling of complete and utter calm swept over her like a wave of poisonous sludge from the swamp that was definitely going to kill her the moment she put her uncovered skin in contact with it. Yes. This is how she was going to die. At last, she'd achieved total and complete inner peace. This is what it felt like to understand your place in the universe and your purpose in life. "Yes, we are."

"You realize our clothes are covered in what I think is runoff from Chernobyl and are definitely unus—"

"I don't care." She truly didn't, not anymore. Body modesty mattered no longer. She let her hands drop from where they hung, still limply attempting to cover herself on instinct. The bandana fluttered to the ground. Shame no longer mattered. Dignity was a thing of the past. She had found true enlightenment. There was a calling higher than the safety of her clothing. "That's not what this is about anymore. Now, I'm going to find that girl." The girl. A worthy adversary. But Willow would emerge victorious. There was only one way for this to end. "And then, I'm going to commit child abuse."

"...Right, so this is where I leave you." MJ gave Willow a deeply perturbed look, picking absently at the mud she'd smeared on her collarbone. "Because I don't want to swim in toxic waste. And also because, honestly, I think I'd just slow you down. And also because I think you've maybe gone to a place I can't actually bring you back from this time, so I think I should probably just let whatever this is run its course." She paused, thinking. Willow barely noticed her through her state of inner peace. "So I'm gonna go back to the hot spring, watch our backpack, and relax a little more while you run through the jungle butt-naked on a personal revenge quest against a child, 'kaaaay?"

"Yes," Willow replied dreamily. "Leave me." She'd already left MJ. This didn't involve her any more. This was a matter between her and the little girl who was too smart for her own good and would not get the drop on Willow a second (third? fourth?) time. Precocious. Willow saw herself in her, in some ways. Her tiny, feral, uncomprehending evil twin. It would not stop her from destroying her.

"...Right." MJ rolled her eyes before her shadow disappeared from the edges of Willow's peripheral vision. "Sharkbait, you better go with her. Come back and holler if she needs me."

Sharkbait squawked, but Willow was already descending into the embrace of the marsh-swamp. It clung to her, thick and viscous, like a swooning Victorian maiden to the leg of a brooding captain on the cover of a shitty five cent harlequin novel. The reek of it billowed up around her, the sort of thing that would give a skunk the case of the vapors, so thick and pungent that it held physical weight. It would never leave her again. This was her destiny. To be or not to be or something like that.

The swamp covered her like a blanket, warm and thick and heaving with bubbles as if a living, breathing abomination; she emerged from the other side, one with the smell as it rose off her naked skin like steam and streamed off her limbs in thick, ropy gobbets of chunky mush. Sharkbait flew beside her, silent for once as she pressed forward and followed the trail of swamp gunk into a more dense part of the jungle; the leaves were packed tightly together and blocked out the light of the sun, save for a menacing ghostly green glow, and the ambient sound of the usual animals quieted to the hushed buzz of insect life. Soon enough, Willow found the girl again, perched on the rock waiting for her as fate had intended; the moment she drew close, the girl's head turned so sharply that it seemed like a scene out of The Exorcist, her scarred, milky eye a sinister white in the darkness. Now, their chase carried a more urgent note; in the darkness the girl no longer smiled, instead by turns staying completely, eerily unresponsive and snarling like a cornered animal from the shadows. She lingered just out Willow's reach, quick and agile; she knew every inch of the area, appearing at turns through the tops of the trees with the range of a monkey and racing through the forest with the speed of a bloodhound. Willow recognized the inner peace now: something more primal but not entirely unrelated to the fight-or-flight response in stressful life-or-death situations she'd faced before (on the rare occasions when she didn't panic instead).

And then a stone flew out of the shadows of the forest and hit Willow right in the naked ass.

"What." How dare. "The fuck?!"

And before Willow could seriously return to her senses and revert back to the sort of aggravated vexation only attainable when interacting with a person twenty-plus years her junior, reeling from the sheer audacity of this bitch and the nerve of that one act of petty, immature rebellion, the girl's eyes gleamed, her smirk menacing in the shadowy cover of the dark woods, the white teeth cutting through the artificial night with vicious intent. Abruptly, painfully jagged stones and sharp thorns began hitting Willow from all sides, whizzing through the air before making contact like the thrashing of so many brambles against her skin. One hit her right in the broken toenail and she went down, cursing, her blood thick and cottony in her body. She pried a large, needle-like thorn from the base of her thumb; the sore red welt puffed up when she did so, releasing a puff of sticky, pungent air that smelled like molding cheese as her legs began going numb.

"...Oh, balls."

Fortunately, Sharkbait took pity on Willow. Unfortunately, Sharkbait's pity involved flying full-force in a tilt-a-whirl of careening wings and loose feathers into Willow's temple hard enough that, combined with the effect of whatever devil seed the devil child had put in the devil thorns, she blacked out immediately.

When Willow came to again, she came to with a sudden willingness to negotiate with terrorists that definitely had very little to do with the quickstand pit trapping her up to her neck and the busily buzzing wasp nest dangling from the child's hand.

"...Okay." Granted, she could hypothetically grit her teeth and power through; it definitely wasn't the worst thing she'd ever been taught to go through, given the waterfalls and also whatever the hell happened during that month she lost in Monaco. Still, as a general rule, torture was high up on the list of 'oh no-no's and also, really, it wasn't like this kid wasn't trying to pry secrets vital to the importance of international security out of her or anything. There were situations that called for 'you can pry it out of my cold dead hands' and this wasn't one of them. Wow, turned out all she needed was to be in a shitty situation to unlock her inner MJ. Who knew? Probably she should've learned that after the centipedes, actually. "I'm sorry for—" what did the kid want again? The skull? But Willow had let go of the skull when the kid asked her to. Knocking her into the tree? Frankly, the child had that one coming. "—everything, but listen. I know this looks bad." For Willow, obviously, not for the child who held her life in a quicksand trap and also her ginormous, ground-flattened hands. The wasps careened dizzily close to her face, louder and quieter in turns as if going in and out of focus. It was not fun, but Willow managed to keep her cool and avoid agitating the sand around her further even as it sucked disconcertingly at her skin. Not that any of that would matter if the child decided to screw her over; she was currently staring dispassionately at Willow, cloudy viscera shifting behind the opaque, milky film of her broken eye. "So what do you—"

"This my island." The foundling's expression remained frozen but her voice, as if coming from someone entirely different, reverberated out as a malicious, threatening hiss. "You not welcome!"

Then the world exploded into stinging, buzzing agony as the child pushed the wasp's nest down over Willow's head; the base of the nest gripped at her neck tightly, prompting Willow to involuntarily struggle deeper into the sand trap. The child gave a final vicious snarl that faded away, a feral, throaty sound that lingered in the air as the wasps hummed in Willow's ear, dark and dank in the warm, dripping stickiness of the nest caressing her face. Willow felt the stings lancing her head as the anger of the wasps built from a soft hum to a dull roar, the surface of her skin boiling as her face bloated and swelled, boils crowding for room.

And then, like the second coming of Christ, the roof of the world cracked open and light shone in to illuminate a large, beaked face peered blinking down at Willow's head. In his beak, he held a sturdy looking vine.

"Sharkbait," Willow said. Or tried to say, although it was hard to get words out through the puffing of her mouth. The wasps poured out of the gaping hole Sharkbait had pecked in a cloud of angry thrashing; the few left behind were quickly swept up by Sharkbait. "God bless you," she tried to say, although again, mistake. She would take back any bad thing she'd ever said about the murder bird. The nefarious look in his eyes wasn't evil, it was analysis. Sharkbait was her Q. It had been there all along. She was going to drown him in dead centipedes and wasps if she survived—not that she didn't do that already, apparently, entirely against her volition by stumbling into disaster.

She wasn't sure how long she spent working herself painstakingly out of the sand trap with the vine. She wasn't sure how much longer she spent stumbling through the jungle, flailing her limbs out blindly through the forest and whacking herself against trees, stumbling over rocks, ignoring the pulsating pain in her face and the white-hot throbbing of her everywhere else, pain rocking through every step as she put one foot in front of the other. What she did know is that, miraculously, when her trembling limbs deposited her face-first into the muck swamp, the toxic sludge cleared up the swelling of her stings within seconds—by the time she emerged from the other side, she was able to trudge the last few yards back to the hot spring, bleeding from a number of cuts and a disturbing number of orifices to boot. She barely found the presence of mind to stumble skittishly into the water with a heavy plop, holding her hands out at the last second to stop herself from sinking to the bottom and sighing in relief.

"Holy shit." MJ was there in seconds, worriedly rummaging through the backpack for med kit supplies as Sharkbait left them for the trees. Willow had by now learned not to speak or scream, but she managed a baleful look of thanks. The bird wasn't a demon at all. He was an angel. MJ patted antiseptic carefully onto Willow's bloated face. "What the hell happened to you?"

"She beat me." Willow's lips stung when they made contact on the hard consonants, still puffed up like a puffer fish. "I don't wanna talk about it. We're never talking about it because it never happened."

"This kid is my fucking God." MJ snorted, relaxing a little as she realized Willow's wounds weren't serious enough to warrant extended discussion or put a damper on her trademark sarcasm. "This kid is my one true love. This kid is cool enough to take down an international spy." Not a spy. "This kid is the tits."

"Well, this kid wants us off the island." Willow sunk her face into the hot water; it prickled at first, but soon she relaxed into it with a sigh. The water bubbled over her face with a gentle, soothing pressure. Like a mother's hug. "She said she wants us to leave."

MJ paused, frowning. "What are we going to do about it, then?" She bit at her lip worriedly, poking Willow right in a wasp bite. Ow. "You wouldn't happen to have a plan, do you?"

"Not right now." Willow raised an eyebrow at her friend, wincing as she picked another thorn out of her hand, then used said hand to pick a sting out of her face. "But I'll come up with something eventually. And in the meantime, it's a good thing I have you, huh?"