28 students remaining

8

Shelby (Girl No. 7) exited the school to immediately set down her pack and take out her map. It was time to use logical thinking - she guessed most people would head toward the Fort, so she would instead go left toward the 'Grand Hotel.' (The largest hotel in the world.)
She picked up her pack and hurried left to find a yellow house with its front door wide open. She decided she could hide in there, but first she'd check her bag.
Her random weapon seemed to be razorwire - an extremely thin and sharp wire that could make easy clean cuts with the gentlest pressure. It was an extremely deadly weapon if used in the right way. Shelby decided that she'd use it in that 'right way.'
Walking into the house, she strung the wire across the doorway at about neck height. That way, if someone tried to get into the house they would walk right into the wire and hopefully die. It was her only way of knowing true safety while she was in the house. The wire was so thin that the person ('hopefully,' she thought) wouldn't notice it, and it would ('hopefully') cut their neck open as they walked through. It would be an instant death.
After stringing up the wire she moved to the kitchen. She set her bag on the table, and viewed her map. The island was full of odd tourist attractions, such as the Butterfly Museum and Arch Rock, and home to the largest hotel in the world. Mackinac Fortress lay on top of a massive hill not too far away ('I bet there'll be a lot of fighting going on there,' thought Shelby).
"Hey, who's there?"
Shelby went into freak out mode and started screaming. She waved her arms wildly and ran around the room. Someone else was already in the house.
"Shut up!" said the voice. But as much as the voice said it Shelby kept screaming.

Andy (Boy No. 4) was hiding in a kitchen cabinet when he heard footsteps echoing in the kitchen. At first he was petrified - but his supplied weapon was a vicious Colt .348, which came with 10 bullets. He gained confidence immediately at his awesome weapon.
But what Ms. Prok was doing was outrageous and ridiculous. He wouldn't play this game; he'd find some way to find a way out of it. But it was when he heard the footsteps and whispered, "Hey, who's there?" that he had made his first mistake.

There are three types of mistakes.

a - the mistakes you make on tests

b - the mistakes you make when you ask a girl to homecoming

c - a very tremendous, unique kind of mistake; one you do not ever want to make.

Type A: Sweat rolled off of Jimmy's brow as he sat in a metal chair. It was missing a little knob on the back right leg, and the chair would tip to the side as he moved around. He was staring at the final exam of his biology class. One question in particular was bothering him. The question read:

23. A population is…
A. The amount of money a government makes each year
B. Many biological communities rolled into one ecosystem
C. The amount of people killed in the Rwandan genocide
D. A large dog

Jimmy was unable to answer the question. Sitting next to him was Becca, the smartest girl in class. He knew that she would manage to get 100 on the exam, so he decided to look at her paper. As soon as his eyes slid in her paper's direction, the teacher walked up to him and ripped up his exam.
"No cheating!" screamed the teacher. "You get an F on the exam, and in this class!"
Jimmy cried himself to sleep that night.

Type B: Matt wasn't really all that popular in school, he was one of those kids who got good grades but didn't play any sports. He wasn't at all popular with the ladies; in fact, he had no game at all. But for some reason he decided to ask the hottest girl in school - Emma - to the huge school dance; homecoming.
He approached her as she was standing with her main group of friends (they called themselves the Cat Clique).
"Can I talk to you, Emma?" he asked in a quiet, shy voice. Emma turned to him and gave him a queer look.
"Okay…" she said, wondering why this loser was even standing in her vicinity, let alone approaching her and talking to her. She walked over and they moved to the side of the hall.
"Will you go to homecoming with me?" asked Matt. Emma burst into laughter.
"You, go with me? You must be joking!" she cackled. Her friends asked her what was going on and she explained that Matt had asked her to homecoming. Everything moved in slow motion for Matt. He hung his head as everyone pointed and laughed at him.
Matt cried himself to sleep that night.

Type C: Shelby ripped open the cupboards to see Andy sitting in a cramped position. He had a gun. Shelby became freaked out and threw a pot at him. It bruised Andy's arm, but he was able to ignore it. He came out of the cupboard to see Shelby armed with a large cooking pot.
"Shelby, are you going insane?" asked Andy.
"Me, insane! You're the one with the gun!" she retaliated.
She then swung the pot, but Andy was able to duck and dodge. He ran out of the kitchen and up some stairs. The second floor was two rooms big, and he went in the left room. Shelby followed him in. He was trapped.
"Look, Shelby, calm down, I'm not going to hurt you," pleaded Andy.
A massive explosion rocked the very foundations of the house, causing Shelby to fall over. The sky outside flashed several times. Andy ran and leaped over Shelby's fallen body. His momentum caused him to smash into the wall, but he quickly rounded the doorway and started charging down the stairs down two at a time. He took a right (the kitchen was on the left) and saw the door to the bathroom. Running inside, he locked the door behind him and sat on the toilet, taking a deep breath.
'What the hell was that humongous explosion?' he thought, looking around at the bathroom. Everything seemed to be a pastel white, from the toilet to the walls. The wallpaper had little pink flowers on it. The delicate touch seemed out of place in this horrible game.
Andy cried himself to sleep that- no, wait, he didn't.

Three types of mistakes, slightly different consequences.
Andy soon learned that his trouble was not over as a knife stabbed through the door.
"I'm gonna kill you!" screamed Shelby from the other side. She stabbed the knife into the door again, ripping a large hole. Wood splintered everywhere and Andy backed against the wall - he could see Shelby's face. Her teeth were gritted and her face was completely red. Her eyes were squinted and her nose was contorted; she looked like a horrible monster. After smashing a big enough hole she reached her arm through it and grabbed the doorknob, unlocking the door.
It burst open and Andy saw Shelby holding up the knife. Her face twisted with rage and she charged at him.
Raising the pistol, Andy fired a shot. The bullet pierced Shelby, and she fell back almost immediately. She was clutching her side, and the knife slipped out of her hand. The hand clutching her side was soaked in blood and it seeped through her fingers, dripping onto the floor. She gasped for air, but was still living. He had only pierced the very left side of her body, and the damage he had caused was probably nothing extreme.
Andy was shocked. He had shot someone, someone who was most likely going to die because of what he had done. His mind went black and his feet took over.
He ran around Shelby and took a right out of the bathroom. He continued for several feet until he found himself in the living room; and there was the front door. The fresh air from outside filtered into his nostrils. It was his freedom, and he rushed at it with a smile on his face.
"I'm out of he-"Andy's last view was of him looking up at the moon. Blood ran down his neck and into his shirt. He clasped his hands around the opening but more blood spilled out through the cracks in his fingers. His body tilted forward, hanging from the razorwire, and blood poured onto the ground.
Shelby crawled into the room. Holding her side, she pulled off her top and wrapped it around her bleeding belly. She lay there for ages, listening to the trickle of liquid that was Andy's blood. Her body, depleted and tired, eventually fell to sleep.

27 students remaining

9

Angie charged through the woods, barreling through branches and anything that got in her way. She didn't care if someone was following her, she'd be glad. She had to find someone. So far she'd heard the sound of machine gun fire, a pistol, a massive explosion and shortly after a dulled pistol shot - that sounded like it had come from inside of a building or something. But her mind was swimming as she found herself at Arch's Rock.
The rock jutted out from one edge of a cliff and connected to another end. It was one of the biggest tourist attractions of the island, and Angie had been there when she had visited Mackinac Island last time.
But she was never going to play this game.
She dropped her daypack to the ground, it didn't matter what was in it. She was never going to play, no matter what the cost.
And the only way to make sure she didn't fall into Ms. Prok's trap… was to kill herself.
Arch Rock was at least 30 meters above a rocky yet grassy hillside. Whether you were to die instantly or break your bones and die of blood loss, the fact of the matter was that she would die if she was to jump down.
She walked along the usual tourist platform and up onto the rock. It was covered in small tufts of grass and was about 2 feet wide. A breeze made her lose her balance, but she managed to stay on the giant arch. The fall looked dangerous, and she was near the edge of Lake Michigan. But she had made her mind up long ago.
Taking a deep breath, she readied herself to jump. The drop looked massive, but if she was going to kill himself she wanted to make sure it was instant. 'One,' she counted in her head. 'Two… three!' She swung her arms and was about to jump but stopped abruptly when she heard a cry from behind her.
"Stop!" cried a voice from behind her.
She turned around to see one of her best friends - Caroline - standing there with Olivia. Caroline had a gun. At this single moment, hundreds of thoughts crossed Angie's mind, ranging from 'quick, jump!' to 'you've found a friend, now band together!'
"Don't shoot me!" shouted Angie bagging on complete instinct.
"I'm not gonna shoot you!" said Caroline, "If you come down from that massive rock."
Angie immediately came down and walked over to Caroline.
"I never thought I would see you two," she grinned. "I think I'm gonna have to thank you. I was just about to… jump."
"I noticed," smiled Caroline. "But you're with us now, and you aren't going anywhere."
Angie breathed a sigh of relief; there were some people she really trusted standing in front of her. She picked up her bag and started walking off, Caroline and Olivia staying in line.
"Did you hear that huge explosion?" asked Angie?
"Did I?" asked Caroline. Olivia frowned.
"Well, we were kinda the cause of it," she said.
"Huh?" grunted Angie.
"Yeah," said Caroline. "Laura has an Uzi. She tried to kill us so we ran to the hotel. Then she lit it on fire and… kaboom."
"Damn," breathed Angie. "It was so huge; I could see the flames through the trees."
"It was ridiculously enormous," noted Caroline.
"And you said it was Laura?" asked Angie.
"Yeah, it was Laura…" said Olivia. "By the way, have you taken a look at the list of students in your daypack yet? It has all our names and numbers."
"Actually," replied Angie, "I haven't even looked in my daypack yet."
Caroline sat down, "Well let's look at it, then!"
Angie took the daypack off her shoulder and put it on the ground. There was some hard bread and three bottles of water.
"Not much water," said Caroline. "But I'm sure that if this game ended up lasting for 3 days it'd be enough. There must be wells around here somewhere."
The moon was still in the sky, although it was getting low. Angie reckoned it was about 4:30 A.M., and Ms. Prok had said the first announcement was at 6 A.M. It would be daylight by then. Caroline was sitting cross-legged, Olivia was on her knees and she was just sort of sitting.
Next was a map, which she quickly examined to check its credibility.
"This is a really good map," she said. "I definitely suggest keeping this map with you at all times… it's just so helpful. It even marks a bunch of popular locations. Look, here are us." She pointed to the symbol for 'Arch Rock' and the map.
"Sweet," said Caroline, "Although we must be a little farther away than that… considering we can't even see the rock anymore." Caroline was right; the rock was now hidden by a deep canopy of trees.
Angie than examined the compass, which she determined was in fine working condition judging it pointed in the right direction (at least according to the map). A list of the members followed, and she quickly skimmed it.
"Laura was number 6," she said to Caroline.
"Yeah," Caroline replied, "I can understand how she snuck up on us like that."
"Was it long before you took off after you left the school?" asked Angie.
"Nah," replied Olivia. "Maybe a minute at the most, but Laura looked like she was at peak and prime in her physical condition. It's honestly no wonder that she caught up to us in the end. Or it could be a coincidence we met…"
"Well, I guess only my random weapon is left," said Angie.
She reached in and pulled out a small black handle with a tiny switch on it.
"What the hell is that?" asked Caroline. Angie clicked the switch and a blade swung up and out of the black metal handle.
"A switchblade!" beamed Angie, excitement filling her blue eyes. "Oh yeah, you guys never told me what your weapons were."
Caroline and Olivia both held up their weapons. In Caroline's hand seemed to be a Smith & Wesson pistol. Olivia was holding a sickle.
"I guess we all got lucky!" said Angie, brightly. (Of course, no matter how brightly, happily or joyously anybody spoke; nothing could lighten the mood during such horrible, horrible times. That was the way of the game.)
"Or maybe not," said Olivia. "For all we know someone could have a sniper rifle or a rocket launcher in their bag."
Caroline gave her a quizzical look, "Do you really think they could fit a working bazooka into one of these daypacks?" Angie wasn't so sure… the daypacks all did vary in size. But good things do come in small packages…
Looking up, she noticed that Caroline's leg was bleeding.
"What happened to your leg?" she asked.
"I was shot in the leg by Laura," said Caroline. "It wasn't too bad; I was able to ignore the pain. But I'm sure it'll come back to bite me if I don't do something about it."
Angie peered at her map. Down by the school (all the area around it was now a forbidden zone; the school lay at the bottom of a huge hill. The hill wasn't in the school's danger zone vicinity) was a clinic. It wasn't a danger zone… she thought they could reach it.
"I have an idea," said Angie. "When the sun rises at about 5: 30, we should be able to get to the clinic in the town around Ms. Prok's 6 AM announcement - in which we will also find out about our… dead classmates."
Olivia shuffled her feet. Then she asked;
"Angie, what do you think of this game?"
Angie just scoffed, "I don't know why we keep calling it a game. Games are usually fun and bring joy. They're meant to take off stress. This counters everything we know as a 'game.' So maybe we should come up with a new name for it?"
The three sat on the earthen wooded floor, thinking of a new name.
"How about 'The Game of Which Has No Point'?" smiled Caroline.
Olivia gave a little laugh and Angie leaned back against a giant oak tree.
"Fine," she said. "I quite like that name. But to answer your question on what I think of this game…" at this point Angie exhaled deeply.
"There must be some way to escape; there must be some sort of loophole in the system. These collars, there must be some way to get them off without them exploding. I know that the three of us, banded together, can come up with some kind of way to take down the system."
"But if we wanted to take down the system, what would we do?" asked Caroline.
"The school," grinned Angie. Caroline's eyes lit up.
"Are you saying we shoot at the school?" asked Olivia.
"Actually," said Angie, "I haven't even thought about it. I was kind of just coming up with stuff on the spot right there."
Caroline laughed, "But if we could find some supplies to build a bomb…"
Angie immediately sat up.
"That's brilliant," she said to Caroline.
"Um," muttered Caroline, "I kinda just said it on a whim."
"No, think about it," began Angie. "We could find some supplies at the clinic and build some sort of rolling bomb. Then we could push it down the hill… and boom."
Olivia also sat up off of her knees at this, "Wow, good thinking! It would probably work too!"
"We'd have to get lucky," said Caroline. "First we'd have to find loads of supplies which are probably scattered over the island. By the time we have the bomb built; it'll probably be well into the second day."
"It's worth a shot!" said Olivia, pumping her fist.
"Calm down!" said Angie. "For all we know, this island might not even have the basic supplies we need to build a bomb."
"She's right," said Caroline. "We're risking everything with this. Plus, who the hell knows how to build a bomb?"
"Now, let me ask you a question. What do you think about this game?" Angie asked out of the blue.
"Well," started Olivia, touching her nose. She took off her headband and put it in her daypack. Her hair fell over her face, and the moon behind her gave her a beautiful contrast to the dark night sky. "If you want me honest opinion, I don't think I could fight in such a game. Most people are probably like me."
"Not Laura," said Caroline, interrupting her. She looked at him and she said, "Carry on."
"Anyway," continued Olivia, "I'm sure that I could kill only to save a best friends life or my own. But it would just be so… horrible. I'd prefer not to even think about it. And it looks like we all got good weapons."
"And let me ask you a question," Angie said, this time looking at Caroline. "How do I know that you're not going to kill me and Olivia the next chance you get?"
The mild happy feeling in the air immediately switched to tension as Angie said this. Caroline just looked at her, bewilderment all over her face.
"What makes you think I would do that?"
"It would only be right to be suspicious of you, Caroline."
"But why me? What makes me so suspicious? We're friends!"
"I don't just mean you. I mean that you should be suspicious of everyone."
"But then how would you be on a team with someone?"
"You wouldn't be on a team with anyone."
"But we're in a team right now!"
"That's why I'm asking you, Caroline, how do I not know that the three of us will gang up together and then when it's only our trio remaining you'll kill us both and be able to go home and see your family again?"
"Angie, that's insane! Why would you say such a thing?"
"Why? Because it's the simple truth; that's why."
Thoughts were swirling in Olivia's head. In this case, Angie was right. How could you really trust anyone? It was sort of like those crazy wrestling matches she watched at home. They were called 'Battle Royale' and it would pit over 10 wrestlers against each other in one ring. You could team up with enemies, friends, foes, anyone, but the person who you thought was your friend one second could be knocking you out the next. Then there were always those moments when two long time tag team partners would have to go against each other in the end. The Battle Royales were insane matches, and definitely the most popular matches of any.
"I think I've come up with a name for the game," squeaked Olivia, interrupting Angie and Caroline's argument. The two looked at her, waiting for her idea.
"It's kinda like this wrestling I watch," she started. "I think we should call it 'The Battle Royale."
"What's a Battle Royale?" asked Caroline.
"It's when they pit loads of wrestlers against each other in the ring until one is left, it's just like the predicament we're in," said Olivia.
"Nah," began Angie, "The Battle Royale just isn't right."
"I think it should be the 210 Royale."
Olivia heard Caroline breath "Yeah…" but then there was a short silence.
"It's getting really late," said Angie. "How about you two go to sleep and I'll keep watch until Ms. Prok's announcement?"
"But how can I trust you?" asked Caroline.
"I think you're getting the point," smiled Angie. Caroline smiled too.
Caroline handed Angie the gun and put her head on her daypack. "Goodnight," she said to Olivia. "Goodnight," said Olivia back to her. Then the two fell asleep.
Angie was with people she could trust, and they had a plan. Her little speech about trust to Caroline was really nothing, because as she sat against a large oak tree and looked at the moon as it was just about to set she thought, 'It's good to have people I can trust.'
Trust; a risk, but also a blessing. Would it be right to trust his comrades and have them turn on her later, or should she believe that they are here to help?

"It's good to have people I can trust."