AN: Again, I apologize for the late update… I'll spare you the long list of things that happened to me that hindered my ability to update on time… (Basically involves getting sick, computer problems etc…)

I already apologize in advance for all the grammar errors in this chapter. Not all parts of this chapter has been beta'd…

Disclaimer: Battle Royale not mine, Lord of the Flies not mine, Percy Jackson not mine… blah blah blah…


Chapter 8: Wallflower

Lily Long's POV (Girl #11)

Time passes by really fast, doesn't it? I can't believe that just less than a year ago, my brother Wesley was still living in our house, tormenting me with his big brother ways. Now, he's in UCLA taking up a nice Arts program and he finally found himself a girlfriend. Then just last Christmas, my little brother Stanley finally persuaded our ma to buy him a pet turtle even though in Feng Shui, turtles slow down business. And me, well, just a few moments ago, I found myself being thrown into this abysmal world known as the Battle Royale program with my thirty-five other classmates (probably thirty-four now). Who knew that one day I'd find myself on the branches of a tree wearing a bulletproof vest that's several sizes bigger than my body? And to top it all off, I had to compete for my life in an island like a "Lord of the Flies" character, except that I'm a girl.

Oh, how I wish that I was just peacefully dreaming about this scenario in the school library, but a couple of pinches to my arms have already dissolved my plea. This is reality. Not some fictional novel that I get myself lost into during break times and bus rides. Just like Henry in the "Red Badge of Courage", I am now facing the biggest battle of my life.

It's really depressing that a peaceful night such as this will bear witness to the carnage brought by this year's program. The moon was in a nice crescent, almost as if it's smiling at us right now. And the stars were plentiful. The night sky was literally covered with them due to the lack of light pollution in the area. I could make out some of the constellations we discussed in Astronomy like Hercules, the Big Dipper and even some of those zodiac signs. I laughed a little, thinking about finding Zoë Nightshade's constellation. The one Lady Artemis made in memory of her fallen maiden. But a faint breeze brushed that thought away as I find myself out of the world of fiction again and back to the sad world of reality.

I decided to be productive and organize my pack instead of continuing my lollygagging. Carrying two packs was out of the question since that would only slow me down as Teacher Sylvia stated earlier. I had to transfer only the essential items from my own pack to the daypack the government supplied for us. I unzipped my backpack with the Scholastic Inc. logo on it (a prize I won in a book drive) and started sorting through my stuff. I chose to bring only two shirts and undergarments for changing, a hand towel in case of emergencies, some very necessary toiletries since it's my time of the month again, my first aid kit, my copy of "The Perks of being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky which I was rereading for the trip and my ma's homemade fortune cookies.

That's one of the few idiosyncrasies our family has. See, my ma deems my brothers and I to be too westernized already. So she sometimes goes over the edge to bring back some Chinese culture into our lives. She tried to teach us how to speak Cantonese which didn't go very well… There was also that one time when we were in the local mall. My ma saw a whole collection of Amy Tan novels and she purchased each one of them: "The Joy Luck Club", "The Kitchen God's Wife", "The Hundred Secret Senses", etc. She then made us read all of them which proved a delight for me but a punishment to my brothers. But her crème de la crème to placing Chinese back in Chinese-American was the food. She bought cookbooks specializing in Chinese cuisine and started visiting one of those grocery stores that are stocked with those rare ingredients in her recipes. She then started making her own fortune cookies and made it a small business. That led to us keeping this asinine tradition of eating one fortune cookie per day. It made my ma happy so I just tagged along and brought some cookies for the two-day trip.

Which reminds me, it's almost an hour after midnight so might as well enjoy the fortune cookie of the day.

I grabbed one of the three fortune cookies in the Ziploc bag and munched on it as quietly as humanly possible. It was delicious to say the least. Nice amounts of grounded almonds generously melded with the flour. My ma added a glaze of strawberry on one side and topped it with small multi colored marshmallows. Just the way I like it. I read the strip of paper filled with some of my ma's random fortune words of wisdom. This one said, "Follow the path that life offers you. Let it be your guide." I let those words sink in till I memorized them whole-heartedly. I wish that it made sense in my current situation, though. Right now, the path that life is offering me is to kill my classmates for my own survival.

Well all of them except for Thea, my designated partner.

The Schultz's were our neighbors so Thea and I have known each other for a long time. But that didn't add up to my knowing of her actual personality. We rarely talked at all since we live in different worlds. She's a pretty girl with talent above all others while I was the short, skinny girl pretending not to exist. She's confident in every way. I simply am not, end of conversation. She has a dream and she's living it, while I lay around reading one fictional story after the other, envious of the adventures the main characters have. Maybe that's why the program placed me here. They know that I'm a downright bum. Someone who wastes her life as a mere observer of what real life's supposed to be. Maybe that was the reason I got partnered with Thea as well. She's the dazzling star of the novel, the Don Quixote. She needed a sidekick that will obviously not outshine her, thus they turned me into her Sancho Panza. At least Thea's not a raving lunatic; a conceited, self-absorbed airhead, yes, but still not a lunatic.

Suddenly, I heard a startling shout nearby. It was definitely a voice from a girl classmate of mine. But I failed to recognize the owner of the shrill cry.

She was probably in trouble for her to scream like that, I thought.

The coward in me wanted to stay put and stick with my original plan which was to hide at all costs. But another part of me was screaming ideas I would have never entertained in my entire life. It was telling me to step down my tree, my sanctuary, and investigate that scream. Maybe all those Nancy Drew's I read while growing up were now influencing my decision. I looked at the stars one more time and at the tree that offered me temporary protection for the starting moments of the Program. As I carefully stepped down the branches, I had this terrible gut feeling that I wouldn't be seeing this tree again…


It wasn't that much of a long walk from my tree when I heard another voice similar to the first one. It was clearly from Sarah and she was shouting from anger. I followed her voice with urgency and found that she was having a very spirited argument with her twin sister Cara, to say the least.

"So what are you saying, Sarah? That I destroyed our family? Now you're also blaming me for mom's death?" Cara replied. I couldn't see her much but I could tell from her tone that she was very infuriated but more from hurt than annoyance.

"Yes! If you hadn't been so pessimistic and violent then none of that would have happened. If you didn't pick a fight that day then she wouldn't have been in that road driving, waiting to get hit by that truck! Dad's right about you Cara. You were the one that killed mom!"

And at that moment, all Hades went loose. Cara lunged at Sarah and started tugging her ginger locks. Then she started slapping and scratching at her sister's face and I just sat there by the bushes, watching their sibling rivalry unfold to its highest levels. Sarah then kicked Cara off her body and started getting up to flee. It would have been a successful escape if Cara failed to get up quickly and knock Sarah of her feet. A bloodcurdling scream escaped from Sarah's lips before Cara gagged her mouth. That's when I realized that Cara sliced through her twin's legs with the huge knife she was holding.

I paled (which didn't really do much with my complexion but that was beside the point). My mind kept on replaying the last few seconds that just passed. Cara just attacked her sister, her own flesh and blood, with a knife. And I just lay hidden there by the bushes, seeing one of the first few attacks of the game. All sense of heroism that I felt as I stepped down my tree were gone in an instant. All of my courage evaporated as I gazed at one of my classmates who was now turning into a would-be-killer in the Program.

I wanted to do something to help. I wanted to jump through the bushes with all the heroics I could muster and take out the knife Cara was holding. Maybe I could sneak up on her and then what? She could easily stab me like what she did to Sarah and that'd just make me another victim of Cara's madness. My vest wasn't stab-proof so my weapon was completely useless as of the moment. I picked up a nearby branch but it was too small and flimsy, kind of like me. I didn't even know what I was thinking when I picked it up. Maybe it was something along the lines of it turning into a wand so I could Expelliarmus the knife out of Cara's grip.

My delusional rant was broken when Cara stood up and walked away from Sarah's body. There was probably a small pool of blood forming by Sarah's legs now and whichever places Cara took a fancy in slicing. She was still breathing but not for very much longer. She then tilted her head and suddenly her eyes met mine. Darkness still covered the night but I could see in her eyes all the pain and hurt she was feeling. She tried to move her jaw but her gag was secured tightly. But it didn't matter what she had to say because I already knew what she wanted to scream at me.

"Why didn't you do anything?"

I stared at her eyes feeling guiltier and guiltier as time passed by. I was a complete coward! I was satisfied with my life as a complete observer, hiding myself from others one book at a time. I was always too afraid to act, thinking that I would just mess up in the process. I was too afraid of being called a loser, or a runt, or a chink that I settled on being a nothing. I've always hidden myself from other people to the point where I became apathetic. I wanted to scream at myself for my stupidity but then I saw Sarah's eyes again. It was something that would haunt me forever if I ever manage to leave this island without being contained in a body bag. Her chest had stopped rising and at that moment; I knew that I was staring at the eyes of a corpse now. I was staring at the eyes of someone that I let get murdered in front of me.

Cara's footsteps broke my daze, making me look into her figure instead of the cadaver staring straight at me. Apparently, she had managed to change her blood drenched clothes with a new one. And she was now holding a rifle in her hands (probably Sarah's) instead of her own weapon. Probably to hide the fact that she was now a bloody murderer.

"Like you're any different from her", a voice said in my head.

Great. I was already losing my mind in the first few hours of the Program.

"You could still win, you know", that voice whispered again.

And that's when the most treacherous and vile idea my mind has ever come up with, enveloped my thoughts.

"Follow the path that life offers you. Let it be your guide."

Cara was a certified murderer now and all I had to do was let her kill the competition away from me, she was my guide. Ma always told me that one should play with their strengths. Well, my strength is being a person that is very easy to ignore. I could just follow Cara throughout the Program and take her out when there's only a few of us left. How I'll take her out, I still had no idea, but it will come to my head eventually.

A big part of me wanted to feel guilty for all these despicable thoughts that littered my head, but the plan was solidified in my brain already. It was a giant spit on the grave to all the classmates that I would allow to be killed by my murderous accomplice. But that voice kept reassuring me that what I was doing was fair. I wanted to live and for that to happen, my classmates had to die. I was doing everything that I could do to survive. That's the path that life is offering me. There's no other option.

As Cara started walking away from the site of her recent slaughter, I stealthily followed her. I carefully blended in with the darkness and kept a safe distance from Cara; just enough to be able to track her without her acknowledging my presence.

"This is it.", I told myself. I've officially thrown myself to the dark side.


Cara kept walking through the dense forest. Where she was heading to, I had no idea. I didn't bother to check the map to get any clue on our current location. If I stopped now, I could lose track of her and that would ultimately ruin my plan. I just trusted her judgment and her bearings while I followed without questions.

We probably walked for hours before she finally came to a halt. I was exhausted from all the walking and trekking. I never had to exert that much effort in my usual daily activities. I then heard a couple of sounds, footsteps. It wasn't that loud, but still fairly noticeable in the quiet of the night. I went a little bit away from Cara to scout on the potential threat that we, or should I say she, would be facing. The best part of the plan was that if she ever dies in an encounter, I could always just follow the person or persons that killed her.

I peered through one of the clumps of bushes and saw two guys walking side by side. One was holding a pretty big handgun while the other held a professional hockey stick. The guy with the gun was tall with a sort of spiky dirty blonde hair while his partner was almost half a foot shorter with a darker complexion and curly black hair. Simply put, I was staring at two-thirds of the basketball jocks in our class: their captain, Jake Anderson and their point guard, David Arias.

Suddenly, Cara shot out from where she was hiding and I thought a full blown gunfight was about to ensue. Instead, she kept on screaming David's name as she ran towards them and enveloped David in a tight hug. I wasn't really sure who was stunned more by this encounter, the jocks or me. But the turn of events actually amused me enough to put a smile in my face.

Well, this will be one very interesting morning.


AN: There you go! You've met another character in the form of Lily Long! She's sort of a fusion between Sho and Yuko from the original novel. Tell me guys what you think about her or the chapter in general. Yeah, that'd be the question for the chapter.

Also, a fair warning, the monsoon season has started here in the Philippines so I'll be expecting some loss of internet connection and some power outages so my updates would be unpredictable. (Which is sort of what I already have so this is old news~)

And with that, Percival Jones is out. Peace!