Meanwhile. . .
The woman finally broke out of the coverage of the forest after walking in a direct circle for two hours. She wiped the sweat off her brow and looked at the scene of carnage before her. A single wing of the plane stood directly up in the sand, in a scene that looked as if it could only have been staged by a special effects team, a crane, and lots of wire. Attahed to the wing were three seats. Standing directly beneath the wing was a young, blond woman wearing an entirely pink outfit, and screaming at the top of her lungs. A little farther along the beach sat another young woman, this one reading a book.
Sighing, the woman walked down the beach toward the screaming blonde. "Al!" she yelled. "Al, calm down, it's okay!"
The woman continued to scream.
"It's okay!" The woman yelled again. She held up her arm. "Look! I found your shoe!"
The girl immediately stopped screaming. Instead, a brilliant smile lit her face as she walked forward to grab the shoe. The second she stepped out of the way, the wing fell to the ground. She didn't even notice as she grabbed the shoe and put it on her foot.
"Thanks, Jess!" she said brightly. "I thought I would be the victim of a fashion disaster for a minute there!"
Jess sighed and rolled her eyes, before jerking a finger toward the other woman on the beach. "Is Ames all right?"
Alyson nodded her head. "Yeah. Some book about bunnies randomly washed up on the beach, and even though it had been in the water, none of the pages were waterlogged or ruined, so she's reading it."
"Oh," Jess nodded. "Cool."
Meanwhile. . .
Charlie and Hurley sat, a melancholy pair against hte brilliant pinks and reds of the setting sun. Charlie picked up a small rock off the beach, and threw it in the water.
"Dude," Hurley sighed. Charlie nodded his head.
"Dude."
"I can't believe she just kicked you out," Hurley said. "That just, like. . .sucks."
"Yeah," Charlie sighed. "Just because I'm a drug addict who obsesses about a random kid that isn't my own, and even though she'd only know me for a week and yet I live with her, and even though I have really furry hobbit feet, doesn't mean that she should want to break up with me."
"Dude."
"Dude."
"Libby kicked me out, too," Hurley said. Charlie looked at him for a moment, disbelief written across his face. (It couldn't, after all, be written across his fingers, because the right ones already said "FATE" and the left said "JATE.")
"I didn't even know you were going out! That's bloody brilliant!"
"Well, we weren't," Hurley admitted. "But if we had been, she would have kicked me out."
Meanwhile. . .
"So, Michael, what suddenly made you want to go into the forest?" Jack asked, as he pulled alongside the younger man. Michael looked at him wide-eyed.
"No reason, man, no reason," he said. Jack looked at him, a little confused at the frantic tone in his friend's voice, but decided that it was probably just a result of his worry about his son. Meanwhile, Locke was muttering to himself.
"Isn't it funny?" he asked nobody in particular, although Sawyer glanced over at him. "We're got Jack Shepard. . .the good shepherd. . .and Michael the avenging angel. And James and John. . ."
"Jin!" The Asian man said suddenly, holding up his hand. Locke just stared at him a moment before returning to his mumbling.
"Locke and Rousseau. . .Ethan and Goodwin. . .hey. . .Good. . .wins. . .yes. . ."
"So, Doc," Sawyer said, sauntering up beside Jack. "Why were you so damn hellbent on keeping the woman behind?"
Jack continued to look ahead, not allowing himself to give any notice to the man beside him. "I didn't want her to get hurt."
"Well, damn," Sawyer said. Jack could hear the smile in his voice. "She been in worse situations than this one here. What's the real reason, Hero?"
Jack decided not the answer the man. He wouldn't like the answer, anyway.
"STOP!" Michael suddenly screamed. Everybody stopped and turned to stare at him. He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. "Got a text message," he shrugged, and then looked at his phone. He stared at the screen for a long moment, before nodding his head.
"Come on, guys, take a left. Walt's that way."
Sawyer leaned in close to Jack, his breath tickling the other man's face. "Hey, doc," he said. "Thought we didn't have no reception here."
"We don't," Jack replied. "But the other day I saw him typing messages to Walt on the computer. We don't have AIM, either, last time I checked."
"Eh," Sawyer pursed his lips, and nodded his head. Jack really hated it when he pursed his lips. "So Daddy's gone a little loco."
"I'm sure it's a stress disorder," Jack said shortly. "Anyway, that way's as good as any other."
"Well by all means then." Sawyer gestured ahead with his injured shoulder, apparently not noticing that even though he had been at death's door three days ago, had miraculously recovered in two days, and was now traipsing though the jungle, his shoulder didn't hurt. "Tally ho."
Meanwhile. . .
"Okay, guys, listen, we're going to have to assign some different jobs to make sure we survive long enough for people to rescue us," Jess said. "Somebody is going to have to go into the forest to try and get some fruit for us to eat."
"Oh, I'll do it!" Alyson offered. "I don't know what's safe and what isn't. Will that be a problem?"
"I'll do it," Amy said, quickly marking her page with a disconnected finger she found lying amid the reckage. "I'm sure there's some mango."
"Good," Jess nodded her head. "Alyson, why don't you go through all of the luggage that you can find, and see if there isn't anything useful we can do."
The two girls went off to being their jobs, while Jess sat back down on the sand. She reached into the sand, and pulled out a Virgin Mary statue. Well, she thought, if that wasn't just the weirdest thing ever. She was going to pull it up and pray, when her finger went straight through the thin enamel. She pulled out a small plastic baggie. She poked at it.
"Wel.l. . ." she said. "It's either got to be sugar or heroin. And somehow I don't think anyone needs to smuggle sugar."
Shrugging, she placed the statue and its contents to the side, before heading into the jungle to gather some firewood. By the time that she returned, Alyson and Amy were sitting down, eating some of the mangoes Amy had gathered.
"Does it seem weird to anybody else that out of our entire, gigantic plane, only the wing and three seats survived?" Amy asked. The other two women nodded their heads. "And doesn't it seem weird," she said, "that we survived without any serious injuries?" The other two girls nodded their heads. "Okay. Just checking."
"You know," Alyson said through a mouth full of papaya. "This isn't really that bad. It's pretty, I have my pink shoes, and we even have sugar!" She held up a small plastic baggie.
Meanwhile. . .
"Men SUCK!" Kate exclaimed, sitting down heavily on the ground. Sun looked up at her in surprise.
"Really?" she asked, an interested expression on her face. "Because with Jin and me, I'm usually the one who does the sucking. . ."
"Whoa!" Claire exclaimed, sinking down beside the two women. "Sun, I don't think that's exactly what Kate meant."
"But she said. . .oh," Sun flushed. "I suppose it's one of those English idiosyncracies that I usually instinctively know. Sorry."
"Don't worry about it," Kate replied.
"So who's the bad one this time?" Claire asked. For once Aaron wasn't in her arms, leaving her free to curl them around her updrawn knees.
"I don't even know," Kate said, staring out to sea. "Jack wouldn't let me go into the jungle. And Sawyer. . .well, Sawyer's just too hot for his own good."
The other two women murmured their assent. Ana-Lucia and Libby came by as well, and sad down alongside them.
"Who's hot?" Libby asked.
"Sawyer," Kate said at the same moment that Sun and Claire said "Jin." The two women stared at one other.
"Well," Claire coughed uncomfortably. "He is. You really shouldn't let him out of your shelter without his shirt on." Sun made a mental note to remember that.
"Oh," Ana-Lucia nodded her head. "He's all right. Kind of a sissy, though. Just one well-aimed kick to an uncovered bullet-wounded shoulder, and he'll start hissing and screaming. I mean, it's not as though the dirt and grime from my boot would have infected his shoulder. So I still don't get what he was complaining about."
"What about the bald guy?" Libby asked. "He looks pretty smoking."
"Locke?" Ana-Lucia yelled. Sun and Kate nearly choked on their laughter, but Claire looked thoughtful.
Meanwhile
"Mr. Clean, you ain't lost, are you?" Sawyer asked with a smirk as he used a bullet-ridden shoulder to pull himself up along a vine.
Locke turned around, a furious look in his eyes. He grabbed Sawyer by his shirt collar, and then yanked him up the rest of the cliff. "Why did you call me that?" he demanded.
"I thought it'd be obvious," Sawyer said. "Give you a broom and you're the spitting image."
Locke pulled him in closer, to their brows met. Jack tensed up behind them. Locke decided to ignore the fact that Sawyer was several inches taller.
"Never call me that," he said firmly. "Don't do it, James."
"What the hell?" Sawyer looked surprised. "Why'd you call me James?"
"It was your name on the Manifesto," Locke replied, letting go of the other man and continuing to walk through the jungle. "Hurley showed me."
"Gee, that guy spills the beans a lot," Jack observed. "Maybe we should consider not telling him things."
Everyone ignored him. Everyone being Sawyer and Locke, so that wasn't saying much.
"Wait a second, GI John," Sawyer said suddenly (alliteration! Alliteration!) "If my name was listed as James Ford, how the hell'd you know it was me? How did you know Ethan was the one that weren't on the plane?"
"Because," Locke said. "The name James Ford had little hearts drawn all around it. You think anyone would find Ethan attractive?" He neglected to mention that there were also little hearts drawn around Hurley's name.
Sawyer seemed to perk up a little at that, and began walking through the jungle again. Jack followed behind the two men.
"Hey, Sawyer," he said, trying to make conversation. "Why did you decide to come out here? Was it to spend more time with me?"
"It was to get revenge," Sawyer hissed. "For them bastards that shot me."
"Oh," Jack sounded a little downcast. "Don't you think you should be more concerned with Michael?" Sawyer sneered.
"Look, doc, you got your reasons, I got mine."
"This is our Island," a voice suddenly said. Locke suddenly began to look ecstatic, and stared up at the sky.
"God?" he asked.
Ahab walked out of the jungle. He had, thankfully, exchanged his yellow slicker hat for a more appropriate African safari hat. He was still wearing suspenders.
"No, Moby, it's me," he said.
"You shot me!" Sawyer exclaimed, and pulled out his gun.
"Just warning you," Ahab said. "Don't shoot me."
"Fuck that," and Sawyer began to pull teh trigger. And was too late (again!) as a bullet grazed his ear. "Fuck!" he yelled, and put his gun down. He really had to work on his reflex shooting. That was the second time he'd tried to shoot a man and been beat out.
"Put down your guns and go home," Ahab said. Jack decided to show off and try to be heroic.
"No," he said.
"I dont' mind," Locke said, and dropped his gun.
"Put down the gun," Ahab said again.
"No," Jack said.
"Put down the gun," Ahab said.
"No," Jack said.
"Put it down," Ahab said.
"No," Jack said. He knew he was sounding ridiculous and petulant at the moment, but he didn't really know how to get out of the situation.
"I'll shoot you all," Ahab said, and pulled a rig in the jungle that set off twenty torches which effectively helped hide the one man in the trees with a gun.
"No," Jack said again.
"Fine," Ahab said. "Alex Rousseau! 16 year old girl who is clearly Danielle Rousseau's daughter! Bring Kate to me!"
A girl who looked exactly like Rousseau dragged out a bound and gagged Kate.
"Oh, dammit," Jack said.