The last survivor in a trial, it was always a race to hatch. She hated that race. There was a few seconds until it's haunting noises would start, when the Entity's warm embrace would be open to give someone a last ditch-effort to survive being killed.
Julie never liked to let them have hatch. She would let them think they'd get it, and rip it away from them at the very last second.
It was her, and some kid she didn't know the name of. The Estate was only so big, there was no way he could hide forever. He would have to come for it eventually, and she'd hear when the exit gates were being worked on. She'd have enough time to get there from here, she expected. She could only see one of them. So it was a matter of standing where ever hatch was until he came over to it.. "Come on, don't you want to get this over with?" She called into the nothingness — it wouldn't be a Legion match unless there was some unfriendly taunting. "I'm pretty bored standing here, and if you die this gets over with faster." That was true. But also if she gave him hatch it would be over twice as fast, since it was already open. Where ever it was.
She continued her stalking, kicking pallets as she walked past them. Getting them out of her way, in case he tried to make a last ditch effort and bolt for it.
Trials were already Jesse’s least favorite thing in the realm. The constant cat-and-mouse with the killer, the fear as he realized he was screwed, the shame as he realized everyone else had died before him… Jesse hated it. Every bit of it. He had never been cut out for shit like this, even after he learned to fight after everything with Fred before he got shoved right back into another hell.
While the traditional escape method of the exit gates was still in play, Jesse’s chances of being able to open one without notice were incredibly low. Practically his only hope was the hatch, an ominous yet comforting sight in any trial. Finding it was the main issue. He was a rookie in trials under any definition, and he couldn’t deny that. Jesse could count the number of times he had to find and escape through the hatch in a trial on one hand, and barely had anything to show for actually being successful in his search.
It wasn’t like he had gotten lucky in terms of who he was facing either. The killer he had faced this time around was one of the masked ones--the Legion? Jesse could have sworn someone had called that group the Legion at one point--and this one was fast. She was bound to find the hatch before him, especially since he had spent the first thirty or seconds after his last teammate died trying to calm himself down from the mounting anxiety that was moments away from crescendoing into a full-blown panic attack.
Once he was a bit further from the verge of shutting down and just waiting for the killer to find and kill him to get this all over with, Jesse took a deliberate breath and dusted off his button-up before standing and getting ready to find the hatch and get the hell out.
Almost free.
And then what? Whether he escaped or not, Jesse was going to end up right back at the same place. He always was.
Now wasn’t the time to get nihilistic. His teammates--his friends--had died in the attempt to have everyone escape, and Jesse didn’t want their efforts to entirely be for nothing. He had to try.
Jesse’s search was practically entirely fruitless, even as he covered what felt like half of the Estate. There had been the occasional false alarm as he heard something somewhat similar to the hatch, but nothing came of his hunches. As Jesse passed another covered shrine, he felt his heart start beating unnaturally hard.
The killer was near.
That was about the last thing Jesse needed at that moment. Floundering, he tried to choose a direction to head to make the most distance from the killer and hopefully find the hatch, but as he walked the way he chose-
Fuck.
There she stood. The killer was patrolling the area like a hawk, checking every nook and cranny. Maybe, just maybe, Jesse could sneak past her and get to the hatch--assuming, of course, that the hatch was even past her. Even if it was, the chances are she would still see him, and who knew what kind of tricks she had up her sleeve.
Jessed crouched in some tall grass as he deliberated, still unsure as to what he could even try to do when he heard the killer speak. It was uncommon for a killer to speak during a trial, at least based on the few trials he had been through, and the words she spoke did nothing to make him feel any better.
Jesus, what was her problem? She treated this like it was nothing, like she wasn’t taking lives and hurting people every time she did one of these trials.
“Why are you like this?” Jesse called out as he stood from the grass and walked in view of the killer., his frustration and fear and pain taking over any rational thought processes that would’ve told him to stand down and figure something else out to do that wouldn’t get him killed. “Really, what d’you gain from this? We haven’t done anything to you, so why do you wanna hurt us so bad?”