“Bleh,” Betty said as she woke up. She really needed to find some toothpaste. She rinsed her mouth out with some water and did her morning stretches, well, afternoon stretches… what time was it anyway? She never carried a watch. Who did these days? “Would have been handy,” Betty grumbled. She resolved to find and figure out a way to tell time. Didn’t they burn down candles in the old days?

That would work if she could find a candle.

It was time to get back to work. Having too much time to think was never a very good idea. The whole forest looked changed as she stepped out. The storm had felled trees, stripped leaves, and even uprooted a few of the larger bushes. A heavy smell of rain hung in the air, familiar and comforting. A smell from home. It made Betty tear up for a moment as she breathed deeply. The old Betty stirred briefly before she was stamped back down. One day, maybe she could get home and be that person again.

But today was not that day.

Betty slapped herself a few times to clear her head and decided she needed a little project to cheer herself up. She may not be staying here much longer, but at least she could make it a bit more homey. And she had plenty of trees to make some furniture.

She was careful to chop the trees into parts she could carry clear of the ground. She did not need drag marks to point directly to her hiding spot.

Once she got a few of them inside, she used Hacky to clear away the branches. Before long, she had a nice set of logs all prepared. Each one was as long as herself, and before coming here, she doubted she could move even one of them. Now she could easily carry the light wood in one hand.

She trimmed a few of them and placed them on the floor. Next, she split the remaining logs before cutting the grooves in the rounded half. In no time at all, she had a lovely flat surface laid out… full of rough wood and splinters waiting to happen.

Fuck!

Betty kicked the logs, sending them flying everywhere. She kicked and stomped until the whole room was full of splintered, broken, and pulped wood.

“That may have been an overreaction,” Betty laughed as she looked around the room. She was no good at this woodsman shit. How did people do this caveman-level bullshit? She was more of a ‘Holiday Inn is roughing it’ kind of girl.

She considered it tantamount to camping if it didn’t have room service.

Growling to herself, Betty decided that she would just kill everyone and take their beds. She was a Slasher, for fuck sake, not Bob the fucking Builder.

====================

The smell of rain was still in the air as Betty emerged once more from her mine. Hacky was a reassuring weight in her hand as Stabby hung around her neck. She had decided the time for messing around was over. The Trash Mob girl had confirmed her worst fears about what had happened to Paula. It was long past time they paid for their crimes.

This world was unlikely to punish them for killing an alien, so she would do it herself. And if she enjoyed it… so what?

They deserved it.

She jogged through the forest and back to the camp. Sounds came from scattered locations here and there. They were spread out, perfect.

A quick scurry through the woods showed three of them in the water. Trashy and Glasses were having some girl time while Jock watched.

Naughty Jock, Bossy would be pissed. Betty Tsk’d to herself before moving on. Jock would need something special.

Twinsy One and Two were with Bossy at the spear range. The three lay in the sun topless and chat lazily in the sunshine.

Punky was in her Cabin doing something… all alone. That looked promising…

Betty found the remaining two Trash Mob in the Cafeteria, more exactly in the kitchen. Guess they were in charge of lunch?

As everyone was likely to be busy for a while, Betty decided it was time to reunite Punky with her brother. They had seemed very close, after all.

“Ewww, too far,” Betty gagged slightly.

She closed in on the Counserlors’ cabins as she tried to decide on a fitting way for Punky to die. The Relay was gone, so subtlety was no longer required. And Punky did seem to like putting on a show…

Smiling as an idea came to her, Betty circled to the cabin, trying to remember the exact layout inside. She peaked through the windows to find the girl doing something at the little wooden desk in the room she shared with her brother.

Betty slowly slid the window open, carefully avoiding any noise. Once it was open, Betty was able to Slasher Step into the room.

Looking over Punky’s shoulder, she saw a glowing flat rock. Writing glowed in pale green as she added more and more lines of text. A minute later, she lay the pen down and read it through, running a finger up and down the side of the wide, flat stone to scroll through it.

Betty watched, fascinated, as the girl idly started flipping through pictures on the rock; each appeared, floating slightly above the stone surface. Punky idly scrolled as Betty slowly raised the axe over her head.

Just as she was about to bring the axe down, Punky straightened and lifted her top, letting two of her breasts peek out. She tapped the center of the stone three times, and the picture changed. It showed Punky with her top pulled up and behind her…

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Betty waved with her free hand; the girl opened her mouth in terror.

Betty swung the axe, and Hacky passed through Punky’s neck without slowing. The girl’s head rolled across the floor as a veritable fountain of blood erupted from her neck.

Betty spat the blood out of her mouth and tried to blink her eyes clear. Her hair was matted to her head in the deluge, and blood drops dripped down her back. It was very warm, which was disconcerting. The flow of blood dropped to an occasional squirt, and Betty looked around. Spitting what felt like a pint of blood out of her mouth, Betty swore.

The room was painted with blood; it was everywhere.

Reaching down, Betty grabbed the head off the floor and switched the stone slate with the head. The body was slumped over in the chair. That would never do.

A few minutes later, she stepped back and examined her work.

Punky’s body was leaning back in the chair, which had been turned to face the door. The top was still pulled up, but the hands now cradled their own severed head in her lap. It had taken a while to get the smile to look just right; in the end, she had found a twig to jam between Punky’s cheeks to keep the smile in place. The severed head now beamed as the body holding it flashed whoever opened the door. As a final touch, Betty propped one hoof up on a box, giving the whole body a jaunty, playful air.

Betty wiped down the floor as she was leaving bloody footprints everywhere, and then Slasher Stepped out the window and into the forest once more. A quick run to the lake and a quick, if cold, dip, and she was on her way back to the Camp. The dip had taught her something. The bottom of the lake was lined with small, clear crystals. It was a Crystal Lake.

She giggled at that more times than she really should have.

She had popped the slate into a nearby tree for later retrieval and examination.

Maybe she could learn something more from it.

Lunch was just being served, it seemed. All the surviving campers were gathered in the cafeteria as she watched their life signs through the wall. The strange glow was, she had discovered, slightly different for each one. The female signs were slightly brighter, while the males were slightly more colorful. Bossy’s life sign had a tight, controlled border, while the Trash Mob each had a life sign that was ringed in delicate tendrils that always reached for any nearby signs.

Could she now literally see loneliness? Or was it a feeling of wanting to fit in, of seeking acceptance, that she saw?

Betty had no idea. It was something to take notice of as she went forward. It might help her pick targets or something.

One of the remaining two Trash Mob came out and called loudly. Betty froze for a second before figuring out they were looking for Punky.

What a tangled web of desire these kids had. Betty tried to remember if she had been this bad when she was a teen. Probably not. She had spent most of her time reading books and playing games. That was in the nineties when women gamers were considered ‘rare.’ Which was a laugh; there were almost as many female gamers in those days as male ones. They just tended to keep it to themselves.

Back in those days, the only games that were ‘targeted’ at girls focused on the most boring shit imaginable. And none of them was anything but the cheapest, most low-effort crap. Of course, the girls played Doom, Diablo, and so on, while the ads only showed boys. It was pathetic. The girls just kept their gaming to themselves. They all knew that girl who came out and said they played games. Those girls got one of two reactions.

It was either the old ‘girls don’t play games,’ or the boys acted like starving hyenas circling a deer. So they listened to the boys talk about the games and kept quiet. When female gamers came out of the closet in the late two thousand’s, they were proven right. Death threats, stalking, and more. And those same assholes who said they wished they could find a girl that played games belittled, ignored, and harassed any woman who did.

Of course, they weren’t all like that; her brother was a great example. He spent years bitching about wanting to find a girlfriend who gamed, met a girl who thrashed his ass on his favorite game, and asked her out immediately. He was shot down in flames and just thanked her for her time and wished her a good day. He married the girl behind her in line.

Betty watched the Trash Mob approach Punky’s door. The girl paused, adjusted her top several times, and tucked a stray hair behind one of her horns. She walked away twice, only to return and finally knock on the door. She knocked and called a few times, then waited on the steps. It was adorable, it was awkward and fidgety, but it was adorable.

After a few more minutes, the Mob looked around and furtively tried the doorknob. Naughty girl, Betty grinned as she moved in closer. Two quick steps and she was behind the girl as she opened the door. She stayed crouched down while she approached, avoiding her shadow looming over the girl.

The door slowly creaked open as the girl nervously hovered in the doorway. The Trash Mob’s breath caught as the door revealed the grisly scene inside.

Twisting the ribbon around her fingers as she slipped Stabby off her neck, Betty stood to her full height. The wide-eyed girl stared over her shoulder in horror. Not a single sound escaped her mouth as Stabby slowly pierced through her chest. Betty watched in fascination as the girl did not even try to raise a hand in self-defense. The blade pushed slowly into her chest, puncturing her lungs. A low whine came from the girl as Betty withdrew Stabby and pushed it into her again. And again. And again.

Finally, the girl’s legs gave out, and she dropped to her knees. Betty slowly spun her around to face Punky. She held the girl’s head, forcing her to look at the corpse as she bled out. She gently picked the corpse up and gingerly stepped between the puddles of now tacky blood. She placed the body in the bed, propped up against the headboard. The look of shock was still frozen on the Trash Mob girl’s face as Betty tucked her in.

After a moment of hesitating at the door, Betty came back and removed the head with a quick swing of Hacky. She placed the head carefully on Punky’s severed neck, but it refused to stay put. A couple of sticks jammed into the neck worked to keep it in place.

Now that was a work of art!

Nodding to herself in satisfaction, she left. It was time to let the chimes sound once more. They had been nagging at her since she killed Punky…

Level Up!

Level Up!

Level Up!

3 Points available….

Recommendations…..2 Body, 1 Mind.

Booo! Only three levels? That was a crock of shit. She had done some quality slashing since she last listened to the chimes. She grumpily accepted the choices and shivered as the tingles left her feeling good. That was definitely becoming her favorite thing.

Grabbing the slate thing out of the tree, Betty found a nice clearing to hang out in while she examined it. She leaned back against one of the spicy Pine trees and tried to figure it out. Tapping here and there until running her hands over the sides. The pale glow showed a mass of writing she could not understand in the slightest. Thinking back, she realized the girl had written from left to right, like in European languages, but it was in columns like in some Eastern languages. The whole thing, with the green glow, looked like lines of crops. It was more agricultural stuff. Like the name Bovinian and the hooves and horns. It all added up to a divergent evolution somewhere along the way.

Was this a world where the pack animals lost out to the herds? It was a fascinating concept, but she could only guess at it with her small amount of information. As frustrating as all this was, Betty was enjoying learning about a new society. She had no real comparisons, as nothing from Earth was guaranteed to apply here.

She spent a while scrolling through, trying to find a place to latch on to. Some sort of clue that would allow her to start to understand the language. What she needed was a children’s book.

See Jack Run, run jack run.

See Jack trip, slash, hack, stab.

See Jack die, die jack die!

Or something like that.

A faint commotion broke out, with added screaming. Betty smiled to herself as she stood, tucking the slate device into a crook in the tree. It looks like someone found a body…

This should be fun.