[center][color=green][h3]Imogen Reed[/h3][/color][/center]

In a silence sullen Imogen went along, plodding after Sofia, Maive, and the others at a slight distance. For now she’d had her fill of venting her suppressed frustrations, however much that actually made her feel better, but she didn’t want Sofia thinking that everything was all hunky-dory just because the uproar died down, either. She took charge again and marched off toward the trees a little too readily for Imogen’s liking, as if she’d personally averted the crisis and put her merry little band back on the road to sunshine, lollipops, and the power of friendship. Sofia hadn’t done anything, though, and she hadn’t earned anything. No matter whether the urge came out of self-centeredness or a misguided need to make up for her mistakes, if Sofia wanted to lead, she shouldn’t except Imogen to follow.

Except this one time, but come on. Not like there was anything else to do.

Despite a total lack of communication or planning, the beachgoers reunited with the junglers almost immediately. The island was just that small. When them arrived she found Victor holding a branch as if to strike them, which earned him a scary look from Imogen. [i]Go ahead and try it, eyelashes,[/i] her expression dared him. Apparently the others had been on the hunt for coconuts, an endeavor that thoroughly uninterested Imogen. Whether or not she found herself on a tropical island with scarce resources, she didn’t feel any thirstier than when she arrived at that pier back in the real world. Of course, the others panicking to clean this place out of any resources they could find -regardless of them possibly being toxic or diseased- might pose an issue in the long run, but all that survival nonsense supposed that things here would be running on real world logic, which they obviously wouldn’t be. By now Imogen felt one hundred percent confident in her ‘coma dream’ theory, despite it not completely explaining how it seemed to be simulated the behavior of random strangers she didn’t know. Then again, dreams were like that anyways. She was probably just projecting, although that made the fact that her attempt to vent and relieve stress in her own imagination got shut down by an imaginary crybaby even more sad.

Regardless, she felt no need to start fires or weave hammocks from palm fronds. Those survival shows worked because the producers had medical teams off-camera to swoop in if anything bad happened. Even if one or two people here had a clue about how to prolong the inevitable, trying to make it feel like they were in control, they were ultimately powerless. As the others rested or busied themselves Imogen just leaned against a tree, waiting for the illusion to break down. She’d bet her bottom dollar that things were going to get screwy, and sooner rather than later.

Thanks to the lack of attention she paid to the other students, she noticed the strange silence within seconds of its manifestation. All of a sudden the soft washing noise of the surf formed the only natural sound within earshot. [i]Oh,[/i] she thought, peering through the trees. [i]There we go.[/i]

Even with the damage done to her glasses, Imogen noticed something big moving straight away, especially with all the lead-up provided by the tremors. From the moment she arrived here she’d gotten the distinct impression that something was wrong with the water here. Normally the ocean should be the whole point of going to the beach in the first place, but this particular sea seemed to her less like a pleasant diversion and more like a yawning abyss, just waiting to pull her in and devour her if she immersed so much as a single foot within it. Like quicksand. But now this bizarre ocean, sick of waiting for people to enter its horror, had thrown something back, coughing it up from its deepest, most primeval recesses, far beyond human ken.

A sagging, warty, blobbish behemoth dragged itself up from the water, revealing its unnatural size one weighty heave at a time. Even as the water rolled off its back, its rugose skin still glistened, moisturized by a thick, sludgy film. Its great googly peepers lolled around in their sockets, all six of them, searching for food. Searching for [i]them[/i]. Imogen shrunk down behind her tree, her eyes wide with a mixture of horror and amazement as she tried to make herself as small as possible. “Hah…hahah….” After all her theorizing, this was vindication–but at what cost? The hideous monster hurled its massive bulk through the air, slammed down on the sandy shore, and blasted the island itself with a guttural roar. Despite her fervent desire to not look as weak as Sofia, Imogen locked up and toppled over backward into the underbrush from the force of the awful sound, even if just for a moment. She then scrambled to her feet, all the manic energy that dwelled within her a few moments ago back with a vengeance. Imogen didn’t need Capitaine Évident to tell her to run; she was off like a shot in the opposite direction, running as fast and as far away from the froggy fiend as possible.

With the teens’ departure from reality irrevocably proven, all bets were off. In the depths of Imogen’s probably coma, did that beast somehow represent the end? Death coming to take her? She didn’t plan to find out. All she knew was that, however bad things might be, she didn’t want to die. This island wasn’t big enough to outrun that thing indefinitely. With its monumental girth it could knock down any tree she tried to climb. Imogen’s only hope was to flee, not get cornered on the far shore, and hope that monster plodded after someone else.