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In this round, we'll be using prompts from last year's bonus rounds! You can either come up with a prompt based on the previous themes, fill a prompt from previous bonus rounds, or fill a prompt that's been posted this year!
All of the previous bonus rounds can be found in this tag.
BR 1 - Playlists BR 2 - Mythology BR 3 - Genre Fiction BR 4 - Prompt Fusion
Fills can be in any format, and you can fill your teammates prompts, but you cannot fill your own prompt.
You can post as many fills and as many prompts as you want!
for your prompt post title, please use the following format:
PROMPT: TEAM [TEAM NAME]
for your fill post title, please use the following format:
FILL: TEAM [TEAM NAME]
If you're filling from a 2023 prompt, please link to their prompt in your post!
Bonus round point distribution will be determined after team rosters are finalized!
FILL: TEAM ACE ATTORNEY
Date: 2024-05-22 09:50 pm (UTC)From Bonus Round 3 in 2023: "generic slasher flick yuri. fillers choice of the following: 1) final girl(*s <- plural. and theyre in love.) 2) final girl and the murderer do yuri together, or 3) yuri couple killing a bunch of people"
Ship: Sara Berry/Julie Jenkins (The Ballad of Sara Berry)
Julie cradled the receiver to her ear.
Leave it to the school to host prom somewhere without cell phone signal. Something about enjoying each other's company without the wicked temptations of WiFi. Julie stared at the blood in her nails — when stumbling on Raquel she'd tried to poke her awake, some part of her refusing to believe the dark liquid already seeping into a puddle around the — the body — until she'd turned Raquel over (stumbling off her wheelchair, knee pressed to the dewy grass) and seen the head wound for herself.
Raquel's face was already stiff. How long had she been out here for? Had she just not seen the danger? Julie didn't know Raquel very well (she didn't know anyone very well these days, really, people would vote a one-legged girl for prom queen but wouldn't look her in the eye in math class), but it was hard to believe that a basketball athlete who was so loud about being religiously non-drunk would dash herself against a rock so easily.
Wait. Was Raquel pointing at something?
Julie whipped around to follow the line of Raquel's splayed arm. The swimming pool. Julie had rolled her eyes when the administration had advertised it as part of this year's "extra-special prom night," for obvious reasons, and it looked like no one else had wanted to try it out either; other than a thin layer of scattered leaves, the water was clear of any swimmers.
But…
Julie squinted. Then took out her phone and tapped on the camera to zoom in. She could make out the outline of some kind of large lump in the corner of the pool, on the shallow end. There was something swirling around it.
Hair, she realized. Black hair. And — she tapped the focus on the phone furiously — a striped dress, two arms, two legs —
Quiara.
Julie stared. Then she choked down the bile rising in her throat and pushed herself back up into her wheelchair. An ambulance. She needed to call an ambulance —
A scream rang out in the direction of the hotel, and Julie froze.
She knew that scream. That was Eunice. Fuck.
Come to think of it, she hadn't seen Patricia all evening even though she'd promised to stick by her — Julie had thought she'd just been distracted by the free food. Or Anne, or Marianna, or…
The prom queen nominations.
Which meant Julie was in line. Fuck.
She pressed the call button on her phone again. No signal, of course not. What had Miss K said to do when they needed to call their parents again? Payphone. Just down the hill and to the right. Julie grabbed the rims on her wheels and started pulling. The wheelchair rattled over stones and silt and jostled her knee, ow, stop thinking about that Julie there's a murderer on the loose —
Laughter. It sounded manic. The music from inside the hotel had stopped, she noticed.
Of course. Who else could it have been?
Julie made it to the crest of the hill and glanced back. No one was emerging from the hotel — either Sara had forgotten about her (unlikely) or was busy killing everyone else (also unlikely) or Eunice was putting up more of a fight than the others. Julie hesitated, looking down at the telephone box. Salvation was a minute away. But she could go back, she could distract Sara — she could stop at least one more death —
No. No, Eunice was beyond saving. Julie gritted her teeth and started down the hill.
The telephone box wasn't large enough for her wheelchair to fit in, because the universe was out to fuck Julie over specifically. At least she'd brought her crutch with her. Julie shoved the door open, dug in her pocket for a dime (she'd figured Sara's boyfriend deserved some compensation for going with her, but ha, fuck that), and called 911 with almost-steady hands.
It was like the car crash again, she thought. Most of the memory was gone, but she remembered glass cutting her fingers trying to dig in her pocket for her phone while people gathered in a circle around her, staring at her like she'd transformed into some kind of exotic specimen, until one of them finally caught on and dialed the all-important number for her.
Well, no one was coming to save Julie now. She'd just have to do it herself.
She explained the situation to the dispatcher as calmly as she could. Their dubiousness was obvious in the way they asked questions, but it didn't matter as long as they sent people over.
"How long will it be?" she asked.
"Five minutes tops," they said, and she had to stop herself from sagging in relief because she would fall to the floor otherwise. She thanked them and hung up, then made the mistake of looking outside.
"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST," Julie shouted, hurling herself against the back wall of the telephone box — for all the good that would do when Sara Berry, the demon queen of high school herself, was smiling at her through the glass on the other side.
"Let me in," Sara said, a little muffled through the glass. At least Julie had had the presence of mind to lock the door.
"I don't think so," Julie said, panting from the shock.
"Let me in," Sara repeated.
Julie looked at her then, really looked at her. She'd always known Sara was pretty in the abstract: blond hair, blue eyes, willowy stature, blah blah blah. Beautiful in the way a Barbie doll was. Julie liked girls, sure, she'd never tried to deny it, but Sara had never been her type — should never have been her type. She was far too perfect for a human being to actually love.
But even then there had been something under the surface. Some sort of – gravitation, which Sara wielded like a scepter, her chin high and her smile glittering. Like a black hole. Everyone in her vicinity had fallen into orbit eventually.
Julie, lumpy asteroid she was, had thought herself spared. But maybe it'd been the other way around, because she'd watched as Sara's friends had stopped talking to her one by one as Sara started developing bags beneath her eyes, watched everyone distance themselves from her as though by silent agreement. Everyone except Julie. Julie had sat alone at her own lunch table — people came to talk sometimes, but never to stay — and watched Sara pull at her long blonde hair, eyes glaring holes into nothing in particular.
Even Sara's own boyfriend had texted, offering to go with Julie to prom instead of Sara. Julie had said yes, because he'd promised that it was just "for business," and she did need a date to qualify for prom queen — not that Julie was even all that invested in the royalty competition, but it was too late to back out by then.
Sara hadn't seemed all that sad the next day, even. If anything she'd doubled down. Hung up banners all over the school and started missing classes to campaign. Wittermore High watched a supernova in slow motion, and everyone else had talked about it in hushed sorrow, like they weren't witnessing the closest equivalent to apotheosis.
Julie was facing Sara now, separated only by a thin sheet of glass. Sara was… bleeding? No. No, the smear on her cheek wasn't her own blood. Julie briefly wondered whose it was. She wondered if Sara even knew.
"Jenkins, you bitch," Sara snarled. Her smooth Barbie-doll hair was falling around her in ragged clumps. They hit the pane of glass as Sara leaned forward. Against all common sense, Julie did too. "You snitched, didn't you?"
"Well, yeah," Julie said. "If you mean that I reported your serial killings to law enforcement."
"Fuck you." Sara drew back. There was a crown spinning around her finger, Julie realized. Some cheap silver thing. Was that the prom queen crown? Julie could have bought that thing in Walmart and no one would know any difference. "I could just kick in the door, you know."
"I'm sure you could." Julie wasn't being sarcastic; cheerleaders had some serious muscles. "Is that what a queen would do?"
Sara growled at her, a wordless sound of rage. Julie's heartrate picked up. She realized she was grinning. Six people she knew were dead, but looking into Sara's face, that almost felt like white noise; Sara's gold-hemmed dress was splattered with gore, and her blue eyes were shot through with blood, and her pearly teeth were bared in an unmistakable warning for attack. She had never looked more beautiful.
"You have no idea what being Prom Queen entails, Julie Jenkins," she hissed. "You're a pity vote. No one cares about you. If I killed you right now the world would lose nothing. Nothing at all."
Julie raised an eyebrow. It was nothing she hadn't heard before, of course. But to hear Little Miss Perfect say it through clenched teeth somehow made the sting sweeter.
"Tell me then, O Queen," she said dryly. "What will you do in your elected position?"
Sara actually faltered then. The rage transforming her face flickered briefly into confusion before returning to its twisted scowl. "That doesn't matter," she snapped. "The point is that I won. And you lost."
"You won," Julie agreed, raising her hands. "No fight from me here." She hadn't even wanted to be prom queen in the first place. "You're the queen of high school land, how does that sound?"
Sara stared. Julie was briefly reminded of the idea of predator animal fear. "Good," Sara said, almost on autopilot, before shaking herself out of a reverie. "But — Jenkins, you can't just give up like that."
"Why not?"
"I need to beat you," Sara explained, matter-of-fact. "I need to kill you and feel your warm blood on my hands. That's what prom is about. Because life is a prom."
Oh god, that was kind of hot. Especially when Julie could see every quiver in Sara's throat from this distance. "So why haven't you come in yet?"
"Because you locked the fucking door!" Sara kicked the hinge, which made a very ominous squeaking noise. Julie's grip around her crutch tightened; it couldn't be used as a weapon, she wasn't some sort of martial arts expert, but if push came to shove she had one point of leverage. "Like a coward! I'm the Queen and you should listen to me!"
"So if I come out," Julie clarified, "and I kneel to you in supplication or whatever, you won't kill me."
Sara paused in thought, chewing on her lip. (Julie remembered her doing that during drama class in ninth grade, delivering a Romeo & Juliet line. She hadn't changed a bit, had she?) "No, I still will. But I'll make it nice and long and sweet."
"That's not much of an incentive," Julie drawled.
Sara smiled. It was bloody. Julie was reminded of queens and scythes and monarch butterflies. "I'm not giving you a choice."
The sirens started blaring just as Sara delivered a precision kick to the lock. It flaked away like paper and she yanked the door open. Julie punched her, grazing her jaw; Sara staggered back only briefly before coming at her again, going for her neck this time. Julie dodged, stumbled — managed just barely to catch herself with her crutch — she elbowed Sara in the chest, sending Sara reeling backward, and tried to twist towards the entrance where her wheelchair was.
Sara's hand shot out before she could. She wrapped her fingers around Julie's neck.
Fuck. Julie should have known she was feinting.
"Time's up, Julie," Sara said, sweet as strawberry jam. She flexed her hand. Julie tried to swallow but couldn't; Sara wasn't even squeezing all that hard yet, but there were already spots dancing in Julie's vision. "Any last words?"
Julie considered spitting at her, or maybe sinking to her knees. But really, if she was going to go, she'd rather do it staring into the eyes of her own murderer.
The sirens were thunderously loud now. Sara didn't seem to care. Julie could see the start of a bruise blooming on her cheek where Julie had punched her; she hoped it lasted.
"I thought you were going to beg," Sara said, almost disappointed.
"Changed — my mind," Julie choked out.
"Say it." Sara took one step forward, then another. The wall was freezing cold behind Julie's back. "Say it again."
"Say what?" Julie mentally flicked through the past five minutes and came up empty. What had she said that hadn't just made Sara angrier?
"You said I'm Queen," Sara said, leaning towards her. She had one thumb on the pulse in Julie's neck. Her perfume was cotton-candy sweet. "You said I won."
"You — you're right," Julie managed. She almost didn't recognize her own voice, with how hoarse it sounded. "You got your crown, didn't — didn't you? You even have the fucking, the, the sash thing. On your neck." She'd only recognized the official prom sash just now; it looked more like a noose at this angle. Stained with blood, like everything else. "You beat us all."
"Yes," Sara said, and broke into a grin. It was more of a Barbie-Sara expression than anything else she'd worn tonight. Julie missed her scowl. "Yes. You should coronate me."
"Can't," Julie gasped out. "Since you have — me — against — the wall."
"Oh, right." Sara shrugged, fluid, and used her free hand to balance the crown on top of her head. It glinted plastic in the dim light, nestling in her hair. Fake. Fake, fake, fake, but the flash of victory in Sara's eyes was the most real Julie had ever seen her. "There. What do you think?"
What did it matter what Julie thought? But she had always been too honest for her own good.
"You're beautiful."
Sara's grin widened until it was a shark's. She swept her eyes across Julie's face; whatever she found there must have been satisfactory, because her grip around Julie's neck tightened and she leaned in.
Despite everything, Julie held her breath—
—Sara pressed her mouth against Julie's forehead. Just once. A benediction.
Her kiss was warm.
"HANDS OVER YOUR HEAD!" someone shouted from outside, and Sara did not let go until an officer had charged in and was tearing her away from Julie and Julie was sucking in the clear night air and Sara was screaming, screaming I'm the queen of high school land, eyes bright with the same manic laughter Julie had heard when she'd killed Eunice, and Julie's arm strength finally gave out as she sank to her knee (too late for worship) and watched Sara struggling with handcuffs the same silver as the crown still stuck in her hair, still laughing and laughing when she was bundled into the car and the door slammed and she was gone.
Julie wiped her forehead. Her fingers came away stained with blood. From Sara's mouth, she thought dazedly.
"Miss?" asked a different police officer from outside. "Are you alright? Miss!"
Julie very carefully licked the blood off the tip of her index finger. The tang was coppery with a bit of wax — Sara's lipstick — and not sweet. Not sweet at all.
"I'm fine," she called. She grabbed her crutch, stood, and walked out.
Re: FILL: TEAM ACE ATTORNEY
Date: 2024-05-27 08:03 pm (UTC)