Hour 22

A light drizzle had started to sift through the treetops as the vile facsimile of a human voice spoke inside her mind, "The choices of your past will haunt this final mile. For every person you've killed, you will be weighed down an extra 10 lbs, or 4.5kg. " Emi fired back inside her head, "How the hell is that fair!? Half the games forced us to kill someone!" The voice commented with an irritatingly condescending verbosity, "Every action, whether justified or not, has consequences. What is righteous to you will not be to someone else, there is no objective morality to the universe." Emi couldn't listen to the pretentious preaching circulating her mind; it was too much after the physical intensity her body had endured today. Fortunately, the voice had a speck of leniency and dispersed from her head. Emi was forced to her knees with an excruciating crack as her feet gave out under an unbearable weight. Had She really killed that many people? She tried to remember as her knees sank into the earth, which was quickly clotting into mud from the rain. There was Conners, who had broken into her home, and in a painful realization, she came to terms with the fact Alex probably counted as well since Liam had forced her to kill him in truth or dare. Liam came next, and she supposed Alice counted as well; even though it was more of an indirect death, she still set it in motion. There was Cliff, Richard... For the next game, it was the wrestler-like man, the man in the cowboy hat she had stolen her current gun from, and some other guy who had jumped her. Then reality began to permeate her fracturing psyche, "the woman running for the endzone, I shot her in the back, and the two people fighting on the ground... I've killed well over 10 people today, and at least 3 weren't even looking at me." The rain began to fall harder, and her hair stuck to her face as she realized she had become a murderer, just like the man who had killed her father. How many fathers had she killed? Her self-loathing was broken when her phone vibrated in her wet hand, parading a message from Sasha across her screen, a simple yet powerful one that read, "We can do this. Be my guide, I'll be your legs." She looked up just as he walked with a swiftness she didn't know his defeated body was capable of, rain bouncing off his large form in a misty veil. Even though he just appeared on the brink of death, he was now moving even faster than he had earlier today. He picked her up over his shoulders with his bear-like arms, wrapping her own arms around his sturdy neck and supporting her thighs under his forearms, like a parent carrying a tired child. As he hauled both her and his own magnified weight, she asked herself, "How? He was basically incapacitated a moment ago; how could he-" That's when It clicked, "enhanced strength!" Bouncing in his amplified stride, she insisted with words she couldn't hear, "Please be careful! You're going to push your body too far!" Sasha had only 18 hours at his disposal, so he had to choose between pain negation for 5 hours and this for 15. Pain negation would've been nice, but it wouldn't have won them the game. This was the only option, their only chance. The pain that reverberated through his old body as every bone rotated in their sockets like sandpaper and his joints cracked like automatic weapons pushed him to the edge. Every heartbeat felt like it could easily be his last, but he refused to give up and did everything within his mental power to convert his pain into strength. Emi had saved his life, and now he was going to do all he could to repay that debt.

Even though she couldn't hear her own voice, she did her best to assert it over the rain to guide him using the map on her phone, if he wandered in the wrong direction, it was over. Her arms felt puny under their current mass, but she had enough strength to keep the phone steady. Unfortunately, there was no color to anything outside of the dim glow of her phone; the once strikingly vibrant trees and collage of saturated hues that made up the undergrowth were poisoned with a blackness that made it look like they were trapped in a never-ending graveyard. Her phone vibrated more than once showcasing more teams had finished, but she tried to ignore the odds stacking against them. They were starting to get close to the winning circle and would've probably already been in it if it hadn't shrunk with every victor when Sasha stopped so abruptly that Emi's chin dug into his neck. That's when she had just enough time to see lights flash from the brush, and Sasha was tackled from behind. She slipped from his wet grasp and slammed into the ground brutally thanks to her extra weight, biting her lip with enough force for her to instantly taste blood. Her face had been scraped by a stone and was half buried in mud, grossly submerging her ear and burning her left eye. She was only half conscious, dazed by the sudden impact and seeing in double vision. She tried to push herself up, but she was just too heavy, her strength too drained. She saw her phone lying a few inches from her, but her arms were trapped under her weight. She couldn't see Sasha or, of course, hear anything. She tried to flex her neck to get a better view, but it only contracted in pain under her excess weight. Her attention was seized by the fact she was sinking into the muddy earth; no, it was more than that; the water level on the ground was rising under the authority of the powerful storm. She wanted to scream for help, but at this point opening her mouth would only allow a rush of unstoppable water in. That's when Sasha fell into her line of sight, two men on top of him. He used his enhanced strength to throw one off like some kind of movie star but a third hacked a small but thick axe into his lower back with a viscous horizontal swing. Emi saw his mouth unhinge in a muted growl as every facial muscle under his wrinkled skin united in an unnatural tremble. Sasha ripped the axe awkwardly from his back and rolled away from a punch, weaved past a second, and then separated one of the men's necks at its base. The added weight his body gained from killing him due to the current rules of the game caused his foot to slip back a step in the mud, and before he could regain focus, he was headbutted by one of the other men. It was obvious now that his opponents were utilizing enhanced strength and probably had the same idea Sasha had for continuing on with the extra weight. As the muddy water began to climb past Emi's lips and threaten to clog her nostrils, she tried with all her might to push herself over. She couldn't leave Sasha like this, but all she did was sink further into the mud. The water was about to seal off her sinking face when a body slammed into her, knocking her head free and allowing her to take a large, choking breath. She realized she had been hit by one of the men thrown by Sasha, prying her body out of the viscous earth. She was sat up in a better position now, her body weight no longer crushing her arms. Her fingers twitched, and she pulled at the Beretta M9A4 in her belt. The other man dodged a swing from Sasha's axe, slicing rivets of rain in a clean arc. He kicked Sasha in his weakened knee, and as he winced, the man delivered a solid uppercut. Emi could only make out their dancing shadows, but Thunder crackled in the distance, igniting an explosion of color in her vision, and she saw a bloodied Sasha fighting for control of the axe. She used all her might to undo the gun from her belt but it fell from her lap. Sasha's jaw crunched under a hammer fist and his eyes fought against rolling back. As another veiny pulse of lightning snaked across the purple night sky, Emi reclaimed the gun, raised it much easier than raising herself from the dirt, and fired. Her aim hit the man in the leg, but her lack of hearing helped as the deafening shot didn't slow her reaction time, steadying her aim from the recoil she shot him in the chest just as the light from the sky faded. 2 of the men were now dead, but the one Sasha had tossed inadvertently freeing her regained his composure from the sound of her gun. He ran to her in a violent splash, seeing her gun as the biggest threat. He fell on her with all his extra weight and began to choke her, his enhanced strength crushing her throat. Sasha saw him dig into her, and he saw his long-dead daughter being strangled in front of him. Newfound rage propelled him forward and he kicked him off of her as another thunder crack punctuated the impact cinematically. The man tried to squirm out of the mud, but Sasha stomped through his face, caving everything in above his lower jaw. His white teeth peeked out from his slack lower lip, red beginning to dye the forest floor under the rain's influence. The wound on Sasha's back bled effortlessly with the help of that same rain, his legs hardly able to hold his own weight. Besides artistic smears of mud across his battered face, he also had an eye that was already swelling shut, a laceration on his cheek, and a deeply cut ear. Nonetheless, he bent down, retrieved her phone which still threw off a dying light as it sank in the mud, and weakly picked Emi back up. A thought flashed through her broken mind, and she felt guilty for it, but for a brief moment, she thought, "This, this is what it's like having a father."

It was still dark out, but the rain had tapered off. Sasha had decided It was too late at this point to worry about their last team member, it had taken everything out of them to get this far. Leaving the rest to chance, a beaten and bruised Sasha stumbled forward on his fractured knee as he princesses carried Emi into the winning circle. Even though it was still pitch black, Rico easily watched them continue on with the enhanced vision of the wild card. 3 severed heads tied neatly to his belt by their hair moved loosely as he rubbed his chin, proud of their determination. He thought, "I'm glad they weren't my targets. They'll be fun prey later."