Jacob looked at Bridgette, whose t-shirt had uncharacteristically adopted a rather modest form. The shirt hung loosely, down to her mid-thighs, hiding much of the redhead's figure. Alice was gd that for once Fi seemed to have quit teasing the girl, even if the logo was still pretty humorous. It had a stylized cartoon magical girl's face posing with an unusual expression, almost as if she was mid-orgasm, coated with pink cartoon cum.
"Magical Girl Rescue Squad - The louder you scream, the faster we come"
Alice looked around at the street. Buildings were still on fire, although there was little they could do about that right now. Multiple corpses littered the road, several members of Daniel's friend group that they had grown up with savagely murdered by the troll. Body parts y in scattered piles from where the troll's cws had severed limbs. Jacob and one other boy, Travis, appeared to be mostly unharmed by their experience - at least physically, while Becky still crouched next to Kyle's unconscious body on the side of the road.
"Okay, so why don't you guys tell us what happened here," Alice started. "With an emphasis on 'what the fuck, a troll' please?"
Over the next ten minutes, Jacob and Travis slowly expined. Daniel had decided to round up some cows and bring them into the center of town, figuring it would be a good way to feed the group. They had fought off one band of kobolds that came for the cattle, but hadn't seen any threats in a few days. Finally, the troll had stormed into town yesterday and stolen the cows while everyone hid in their houses. They had panicked, unsure what to do, and tried to come up with several traps. One of the boys had rigged several gas cans at key points around the vilge, hoping to catch the troll in the explosion if it came back.
Unfortunately for the town, the gas cans worked too well - the fire had damaged the troll, but also lit two houses on fire. Then the troll started fighting back, grabbing fming bits of debris and throwing them at the former high school students, setting most of the rest of the buildings on fire. About this point in time, Daniel and his girlfriend Karen seemed to have vanished, as nobody could remember them after that. Several people had gotten killed in the process, including Samantha, Travis's ex-girlfriend. Samantha had apparently unlocked a wizard-type css and tried casting spells at the troll, which had retaliated by throwing a parked car at her. All that was left was crushed legs poking out from underneath an upside minivan, a Wizard of Oz scene gone horribly wrong.
"And then you guys showed up, and you know the rest," Jacob finished. "The way you guys fought," he looked over at Bridgette and blushed, "you're way stronger than we are. We were such idiots, trying to bully you into joining us. I don't even have a css unlocked, I was just trying to help. Kyle was one of the few who had actually earned a css and gotten starter equipment, and look how well that turned out for him. We have no fucking clue where Daniel or Karen went. They were around at the start when the troll showed up, encouraging us to get weapons and fight, and then when the explosion happened they vanished. Haven't seen them since, the fucking cowards."
After that, Jacob and Travis went to start scrounging through the town, finding what items were salvageable. They also started trying to collect the dead bodies together to give them a proper burial. It involved a lot of trips back and forth and some very grisly matching of "I think this is Frank's arm" or "No, that looks like Bill's." Eventually, they had lined the corpses of their friends and cssmates up together, as well as collected a very meager collection of food supplies, maybe enough for a few days. Everything else had burnt in the fires. They spent most of the time alternating between sobbing in horror and vomiting in disgust as they moved around the corpses.
The trio spent the time scouting around the town, trying to take note of which houses were destroyed (most of them) or undamaged. The undamaged ones looked like they had been looted pretty thoroughly, so it was a good bet most supplies were gone. Colin's house had luckily stayed retively undamaged, so he was able to salvage some photos and other mementos out of it. The town was a total disaster, with no reason to ever come back at this point, though. Eventually, they found their way back to the street where they had fought the troll, seeing the four townsfolk sitting together, talking quietly. Kyle had regained consciousness at some point and was talking to the other two boys, but none of them had pleased expressions on their face. As the three friends walked back over, the four townsfolk scrambled to their feet, Becky helping Kyle to his feet. Kyle stepped forward, his face ashen as he gnced at his missing forearm with a grimace. He then looked back up at the trio, making eye contact with each of them briefly.
"I ... thank you. You saved us. Nothing I can say will ever make up for the shit I put each of you through over the years. I'm sorry. Truly. Nothing has helped drive home that high school doesn't matter more than the st few hours, none of my petty bullshit was even remotely helpful trying to save my friends ..." Kyle broke down and sobbed, gncing at the line of dead bodies, as Becky hugged him. Kyle straightened back up, trying to brush his tears away with his missing arm and accidentally hitting himself in the face with his stump, bringing a snarl of rage from him.
"What I want to do is beg for your help. You three clearly are doing well and are very strong, even if your tactics are ... unusual." Kyle blushed, looking over at Bridgette, obviously thinking of her magical transformation. "But I'm not going to. You don't trust me and I don't bme you. And honestly, there's nothing we can offer you. We'd be a drag on your resources. You're better off without us. I just want to thank you for saving our lives before you leave." Behind Kyle, Jacob and Travis tried to look stoic, knowing that Kyle was sentencing the four of them to death, even if they didn't have a better solution.
Bridgette opened her mouth to reply, but Alice jumped in front of her, quickly interjecting, "Give us a minute, okay?" She then led Bridgette and Colin off to the side a few paces, out of earshot. Alice turned to the others, "They can't stay here, there's nothing here for them. Defiance is destroyed. They will die on their own. What can we do?"
Bridgette looked at Alice, "I love you, A, but that's a whole truckload of 'not my fucking problem.' These people were jerks to us in high school, they were jerks to us when the world went to shit, and now they need us. I'm not inclined to help."
Colin gnced back and forth between the two girls. "Look, I don't have all of your history with Daniel, although the whole football team certainly treated me like shit in school, but that's just cold. These are literally the only four other people we know for sure are alive in this world aside from the missing Daniel and Karen, and you're just going to leave them like this?"
Bridgette crossed her arms, gring at her two friends. Alice touched her arm, pleading. "B, I know you don't like this. It's a shitty situation, there's no denying it. And trust me, if Daniel and Karen had been here... I'm not sure if I'd have been the bigger person. But Kyle, Becky, Travis, and Jacob? They were dicks, but mostly they were followers. I think we can find ways to make it work and take the high road. They're beaten down, demoralized, and have nothing left. They're not even remotely a threat to us. We have the opportunity to be their heroes. We can find ways for them to help us, as we build and grow our own community."
After a moment, Bridgette relented, leaning in to Alice. "I'm sorry for being a bitch about it. I just ... have a lot of pent-up trauma from school that I really haven't worked through. I was just hoping to get away from them all. You know my pn was to move out of here and never come back, so having to face it is rough. You're a better person than I am, and I'll find a way to make it work."
Alice hugged her lover, "We will find a way to make it work. You're not alone." Bridgette nodded and kissed Alice on the forehead.
The three then walked back over to where the four companions stood, faces grave as if awaiting a judge's verdict - one they didn't expect to be in their favor. Bridgette looked the four over, scowling. Her expression twisted, a mixture of disgust and dismay. She gnced back over at Alice and Colin over her shoulder, getting a thumbs up from Colin and a loving smile from Alice.
"FUCK!" Bridgette screamed at the sky in rage. The four bnched in terror. "Get your shit, you're coming with us. You can stay in the barn and find ways to be helpful. We're not going let you die, we're not cunts like that." She then spun on her heel and walked off, finding her way to the troll's corpse where she pulled out her greataxe and proceeded to y into it, cleaving it into smaller pieces as she worked out her frustration.
"Wait, really?" Becky asked, gncing at Alice and Colin in disbelief, tears welling in her eyes.
Alice nodded. "I don't know how we're going to make it work, but you're welcome to come stay with us up at my farm. Short term, you can stay in the barn and bed down with the animals. You can help with the usual farm chores and find other ways to be useful. Longer term, I don't know. We can try to build a few small huts so you can get your own space. We've been trying to make it fairly defensible, at least when someone's not throwing bricks through my kitchen window." She gred at the three boys, who sheepishly looked at their feet.
"Having some extra hands around the farm would be a great help. And if you want to get strong enough to survive in this world, we can find ways to help that as well. Just ... give her some space, okay? And understand that you all spent the st four years making our lives shit, so actually give us all some grace. You need us far more than we need you, but we're trying to do the charitable thing."
Becky broke down in tears, running over and hugging Alice. "Thank you," she cried into Alice's neck, tears drenching Alice's sundress. "I am so sorry for everything. You won't regret this, I promise." Alice awkwardly patted the girl's head, trying to disentangle herself as the teen clung to her.
Kyle stepped forward, raising his remaining hand to shake Colin's. "Colin, I'm sorry, man. I was a dick because I thought I had my life figured out and everyone who had a different path than me was inferior. I was such a fucking loser, but too stupid to realize it. Thank you. We'd be dead without you, and I can never make it up to you three, but I promise I'll try." Jacob and Travis stepped forward, making simir tear-filled apologies. They all wisely kept their distance from Bridgette, who had shifted from hitting the troll corpse with her axe to instead throwing chunks of the rubbery troll skin into the still-burning buildings.
As Bridgette reached down into the corpse to grab another chunk to throw, she suddenly stopped, picking up something and raising it into the air. "Hey guys, check this out!" She held a small leather sack, covered in troll innards and dripping with green blood. As the six approached, Bridgette flicked her hands, part of a troll intestine spping onto the ground next to Travis with a thud. The boy gnced at it, face turning green, as he turned and vomited onto the asphalt.
