Heads is Heads, Chapter 09
by Technomad
Toshinori Oda
Normally, Toshinori Oda was ashamed of his small size. Compared to the other boys--big, vulgar hulks that they were--he looked even younger than he was. Here and now, though, he was very glad that he wasn't any bigger than he was. His size meant that he could hide in places that the others wouldn't be as likely to check.
He knew--he just knew--that he'd be the one to emerge victorious. It made sense, didn't it? The Program was all about the survival of the fittest, and he was so superior in so many ways, he had to be the survivor. Was he not the son of one of the richest men in their prefecture, and second heir to Oda Foods, one of the biggest produce companies in the Greater East Asia Republic? Was he not already one of the top young violinists in the country, with a spot at a top conservatory awaiting him once he graduated from this impossibly vulgar school? Such a superior person was not meant to be taken down by inferiors!
However, he had to acknowledge that it wouldn't be easy. Instead of a weapon, his pack had held a surprise--a bulletproof vest. He had never quite believed all the hype about such things, but it fit just fine, so he had it on under his school uniform jacket. He rather thought that, once he had prevailed and returned home, he'd keep it as a souvenir of a time when his superior nature had not been universally acknowledged.
While the vest promised to serve him well, it was no substitute for a real offensive weapon. While searching through the houses in the settlement, he had come upon a baseball bat, and had promptly appropriated it. His life was worth far more, after all, than some vulgar person's property rights, and Kamon had said that they were free to use what they could find. If you want to complain, Toshinori told the vague image of the bat's owner in his head, go to Kamon! He smiled at the thought of what sort of reception such a complaint would get. Would Kamon throw a knife into the complainer's forehead, as he had done with Fumiyo Fujiyoshi for whispering in "class," or would he shoot, as he had done with Yoshitoki Kuninobu or Noriko Nakagawa?
This was not the time for daydreaming. The Program was still on, and Toshinori was hiding in the woods. He had heard shooting from a short distance away, and wondered who had been shooting at whom. It had sounded like two different guns; one much louder than the other.
After a while, curiosity overcame his caution, and he moved slowly through the brush, heading toward where he thought the shooting had come from. Even if someone was there, he felt that he could deal with the situation; his classmates consistently underestimated him, after all. Despite his great skill with the violin, they preferred Shuuya Nanahara's tuneless screeching--rock "music," they called it. Toshinori had considered ratting him out to the political police, but had reluctantly decided against it; while he despised his vulgar classmates, he knew that they could easily make his life miserable if they found out that he had betrayed one of them to the authorities.
And so, he had had to sit there, overlooked by the girls, who preferred muscular throwbacks to cave-man days like Shinji Mimura to someone who was clearly superior, and treated with casual contempt by the boys, who valued sports prowess over musical talent. While he hadn't been pleased, exactly, to find that their class had been selected to be in the Program, he had been happy at the thought that so many vulgar barbarians were shortly going to get exactly what they deserved. And--who knew? He might just be the one to give it to them! Nothing like evening old scores, as his father would say after defeating a business rival or quashing some vulgar neighbor.
Coming to a clearing, Toshinori cautiously peered through the leaves of a bush. The clearing was bathed in moonlight, and he could see very clearly, while staying safely wrapped in shadows. In the middle of the clearing two bodies were sprawled; the bloodstains on them looked black in the moonlight. Beside them, a small figure could be seen, sitting hunched over, with one hand on its side.
For a second, Toshinori couldn't figure out who it was. Then it hit him--this was Yuichiro Takiguchi! Toshinori's wide mouth twisted into an unlovely grin--the sort of expression he avoided around his classmates. Even without a smile, with his wide, thick-lipped mouth and bulging eyes, his nickname was "Froggy" or "Frog-boy," and he didn't want to give the vulgarians more reasons to hang such unbecoming names on him.
Of all the wonderful luck,
he thought, to find the one person in our class that I'm likeliest to be able to overpower! Even with his baseball bat, Toshinori was realistic enough to know that up against the likes of Hiroki Sugimura or Shogo Kawada, he didn't stand much of a chance. But against Yuichiro, Toshinori knew that he was fairly safe--and Yuichiro looked like he was wounded, too! Better and better!Toshinori considered several approaches. He didn't know whether or not Yuichiro had a gun, but, from the fact that there were two corpses or severely wounded people with him in the clearing, Toshinori figured that the chances of Yuichiro packing heat were pretty good. While his bulletproof vest was a wonderful ace-in-the-hole, it didn't cover every inch of his body; Toshinori didn't want to get a bullet through, say, his knee. The thought of lying there, crippled, in pain, wondering who would come to finish him off, or whether the area he was in would go "danger-zone" and his collar would explode around his neck, made him shudder.
So, the subtle approach would work best. Trying to look as innocent as possible, Toshinori stepped from behind the bushes. "Yuichiro? It's me--Toshinori! You remember me, don't you?" He walked forward, his hands out and empty--he had slipped the baseball bat down the back of his jacket. He could still reach it in a hurry, but he figured that seeming to be unarmed would get Yuichiro to trust him more easily.
Yuichiro whirled, his eyes going wide. "Toshinori? Man, it's good to see you! For a second, I thought you were playing!" He hefted a revolver, and Toshinori felt a surge of almost physical lust to possess it himself. "Are you okay? I took a bullet, but it just grazed my ribs and knocked me down. I was pretty lucky--poor Tadakatsu wasn't!" His eyes welled with tears, silvery in the pale moonlight.
"So that's Tadakatsu?" By this time, Toshinori had come closer, and he could see that it was, indeed, Tadakatsu Hatagami. It looked like he'd taken a bullet right to the head; part of his head was missing, and he was lying in a pool of blood. "Who's the other one?"
"That's Kazushi Niida. He came running out of the bushes, screaming something about being a stone-cold killer, and shooting as he came. He got Tadakatsu, and grazed me--but I nailed him good!"
"So you did," Toshinori had to admit. Kazushi Niida was lying there on his back, a surprised expression frozen on his face, with several large holes in him; the biggest one was right in the center of his breastbone. "I didn't know you were such a good shot!"
"I'm not," Yuichiro admitted, his head low. "I just got lucky."
Well, with me around, your luck has just taken a turn for the worse, dear vulgar
otaku classmate, thought Toshinori. As befitted a superior person, he held anime and manga in utter contempt; vulgar amusements fit only for vulgar minds. An obsession with such trivialities was like hanging a big sign around one's neck announcing I Am Vulgar!Vulgar or no, he still had the pistol, and while Toshinori wanted it, he didn't want to fight for it. Sitting down on the log beside Yuichiro, Toshinori began sliding the baseball bat out of the bottom of his jacket, holding it down low where Yuichiro couldn't see it. He had begun forming a plan.
Yuichiro didn't seem to notice what he was doing; he had lost a good deal of blood, and seemed to be on the verge of passing out. Toshinori watched him patiently, awaiting his chance. Finally, some time after the bat was free and ready for use, he saw his opening; Yuichiro's eyes flicked shut and his head slumped down on his chest.
In one swift motion, Toshinori was on his feet, swinging the bat at Yuichiro's head. He connected, with a sickening noise like a melon being dropped from a height, and Yuichiro fell to one side, dead before he hit the ground.
With no more reason to hide what he was doing, Toshinori bent to appropriate the pistol. He remembered that Yuichiro had mentioned Kazushi Niida shooting at them, and went to see what he'd been using. His eyes widened at what he found. "A .44 AutoMag? Man alive! You must have been a really lousy shot, Kazushi!" he sneered at the corpse. "With one of these bad boys, I could take down a polar bear with one shot!" He tucked both pistols under his jacket. "I think I'll just keep these as souvenirs of an interesting encounter. And--let me see--what have we here? All three of your bags?" He began rooting through. "Ammunition, water and food, to go with what I already had! This is my lucky day!" Or, he thought, proof of my superiority! He couldn't quite credit just how easy it had been to fool Yuichiro.
Mitsuko Souma
The weight of the submachinegun was comforting as Mitsuko made her way through the woods. Every so often, she'd stop, listening carefully for the sound of anybody moving around.
After leaving the lighthouse, she had wandered roughly southwest, carefully avoiding danger zones; she had no intention of allowing her head to be blown off by remote control. She had kept track of how many of her classmates were now dead, and she thought she had a real chance of winning the game.
Her beautiful eyes narrowed as she considered who, among those she knew to be still alive as of the last announcement, was likeliest to be dangerous. Most of the girls were gone, but Hirono Shimizu might be a tough customer to deal with. She had always been strong-minded, and Mitsuko had often sensed that if she weakened, or her plans started turning pear-shaped, Hirono would be happy to challenge her for leadership. Since a lot of her favorite tactics--sex appeal, the "cute little girl" routine--wouldn't work on Hirono, who knew her far too well, Mitsuko was glad that it had never come to that.
If I see you, Hirono dear, before you see me, I'll make sure you never do see me. Yoshimi Yahagi had been an easy kill--the girl was a weak character, and had fallen in with Mitsuko's gang of girl delinquents more-or-less by accident--but Hirono wouldn't go down as easily as Yoshimi had, and Mitsuko knew that Hirono had a gun. Mitsuko didn't fancy the idea of a real gunfight at all.
Dawn was coming on, with the sky to the east lightening. Mitsuko was near a group of houses, and she looked out through the bushes, straining her ears for any sound that meant people were nearby. For a second, she missed her girl gang; it would have been much easier if they had been allowed to form teams, and having more ears and eyes than her own would take some of the pressure off her.
When she was sure that nobody was around, she stepped forward. She was beginning to flag; her endurance had always been good, but the nap she'd indulged in at the lighthouse hadn't really been enough to put her back at the top of her form, and while she was glad of them, the guns she had scavenged were heavy. She tried a door, and when she found it was open, she slipped into a house.
Pausing at the entry, she held very, very still, waiting, and letting her senses tell her if the house was empty. In her career as a girl burglar, she had noticed that an uninhabited home gave off a different "vibe" than one where someone was present; she had forgotten that for a few minutes when she had first been loose on the island, and if the person in the house she had entered been more aggressive than Megumi Etou, she could have easily been taken down before she could do anything about it.
The house felt empty, so Mitsuko relaxed. She let her eyes adjust to the thicker darkness inside; the sky was growing light outside, and a little light came in through the windows. She went into one of the bedrooms, and sat down, taking the load off her feet. For the millionth time, she cursed whoever had decreed that schoolgirls' uniforms had to have the sort of shoes they did; for this sort of thing, she'd have much preferred a good pair of gym shoes.
Outside, something was moving, and she went very still, watching through the window. From where she sat, she could see outside easily enough, but she was deep in shadows. Unless someone came right up to the window and peered in, she didn't think they could see her--and if they did do that, she would have a perfect shot at them.
A small figure in a boy's school uniform was sneaking through the houses, peering around himself. Mitsuko could see that he--it looked like Toshinori Oda, that horrible little snob--was carrying a big silver pistol in one hand. While she watched, he crept up to the well outside, lowered the bucket, and raised it, filling his water bottles. She raised her eyebrows--he had quite a few more bottles than he'd have been issued with. Looks like someone's up on the scoreboard, doesn't it? she thought.
She considered ambushing him, but dismissed the idea. She was tired, and really not in the mood for a firefight. She could also see that Toshinori was both armed and alert, unlike the girls in the lighthouse. The point of the game was to win, not to see how many fights you could stir up. She had more than enough kills, and she didn't think Toshinori would last long; his arrogance and conviction of his own superiority would lead him straight into a situation he couldn't handle.
With a long yawn, she stretched out on the bed. Before she drifted off, she set her mental alarm so that she'd be awake for the next announcement from Command Central; she didn't want to miss that.
END Chapter 09
