Who's Your Leader?

-The Beach-

--Sky's Perspective--

Ullr's two men backed off and I stepped closer and closer to him. The stone on my left hand began to ache severely the closer I got, so I kept a safe distance from him.

"Come on, I didn't beat you that bad, did I? What happened to that cocky personality? Is it buried underneath those puddles of blood coming from your nose?" I couldn't help but crack a smile. I could hear Red and Carl both groan out in pain, I guess they were conscious once more.

"Stop antagonizing him! You beat him when he was on the ground, unconscious!" One of the two men said to me. I scoffed, pointing at Ullr.

"And you think he would've been any better than me? He would've done the same, if not worse to me. I defended myself, and I don't know why you have such a problem with that." I told the man.

The crowd began to mumble lightly, finally breaking the silence that beating Ullr brought. "A problem?! You almost killed him! How can we trust somebody as our leader who almost killed somebody?" I tilted my head in confusion, almost laughing out of spite for these two men in front of me.

"Ullr admitted to wanting to use somebody for pleasure and owning a servant, and you want to yell at me for trying to kill him? I mean, we've only spent a singular day on this beach, and you want me to just let him assume control?! You want me to let him use my friends for his own personal gain, just because it's wrong for me to kill him?" I grabbed the axes handle that was sitting by Dani and Domin and started to walk back toward the two men.

"I think I made it plenty clear how I wanted to survive together, how I wanted to compromise and help out each other, and you three idiots just had to have this high ground over me. Now, look at you, staring up at me from the sand mixed with his blood. I just don't understand what you want from me." I yelled at them. I threw the axe to the side, away from their reach, and crouched down to their level.

"If you want to make me the bad guy, that's fine with me, but I don't want you to ever change your mind and decide that you want to work with me, rather than against me." I stood up and turned towards the crowd, everybody already looked frightened enough, but I had to defuse this environment before it killed me.

"I'll make it clear to you. I won't hurt anybody if you just help the group survive. Not even that, I won't hurt anybody else if you don't try to slow us down. We need a place to sleep at night, I'm sure you've all realized it's getting colder." They began to talk amongst themselves. Carl, Red, and Domin were all staring at me, waiting for me to speak once more. That sheer panic alone their gazes brought was enough to make me afraid to say anything else.

"Now, listen closely! We need to use that axe to make more, maybe not of the same quality, but maybe more stone axes! My friend Carl here will make every single one of you your own axes, and then we can split up, cut the trees down, and make homes for the small groups we've already made. From that point on, I don't care what you do, but please, we need to survive together, or we stand no chance." I looked back down to the two men, who were silent from that point on.

"You two… Isaac and Drake, I want you to watch over these two and make sure Ullr heals properly. Tell Ullr if he still feels violent towards me when he wakes up, we can go again." I turned back towards the rock I was thrown into and waved my hand up.

"That is all I need to say." I finished.

"Hey." An unfamiliar man with darker skin than me grabbed my arm and grinned, "What's your name?" He asked.

"It's Sky." He smoothly shifted his body in the other direction and shouted at everybody else, encasing his mouth with his hands to make his voice louder.

"You heard Sky! We listen to him!" The crowd began to agree with the new man in front of me, and he turned around with a thumbs-up.

"It's Xavier. Let me know if there's anything I can do for you." Xavier offered to me.

I nodded and turned back. I could hear the crowd say things like, 'There's no way I'm listening to that kid.', but that was fine to me. I wasn't asking to be the leader; I was just making a call to action.

"Sky!" Dani ran up to me and put her soft hands over my left arm.

"It's broken or something, what do we do?!" She yelled out to me.

"You don't know? It's just dislocated, I just have to put it back." I told her, but she only looked more confused than anything. Red approached from another direction and offered to do it. She laid me down on the sand and pushed against it, sliding it into place while causing immense pain. I barely let out any noise, but it still hurt a ton.

"So, Sky, it looks like you're the pseudo-leader after all. I'll follow your lead from here on out." I put my hands up to Domin.

"No no, we should still listen to Carl, but I think they just needed to be pushed in the right direction" Red shook her head in retaliation.

"No, I didn't like Carl's orders. I got my butt kicked for listening to him, literally." She pointed to the blood on her face and laughed a little.

"She's right, Sky. I didn't want to call the shots, but somebody had to. That person should be you. I think you're cut out for the bit." He explained. "No, it's just luck. I don't even know what overcame me when I was fighting Ullr. I couldn't think about anything else, like Domin told me when we were hunting. My vision was focused on him and nothing else around me mattered." I said, gripping the left side of my head.

"I'm sure you noticed your stone as well," Domin told me, pointing to my left hand. I lifted it up again, but it didn't look any different. To me, it was just the same old white diamond outlined in gray metal.

"It was sparking with a purple color at some point. That's exactly what I saw before you launched into the rock beside us." I turned back at the rock and very obviously, there was an imprint of my body on the other half of it.

"No matter, we'll discuss later. Sky and I ended up finding wildlife, and Sky even killed a deer back on the east side of the beach. The only problem with that deer is that it had rabies, so we can't eat any of the meat. But we can use the hide for a blanket or something like that. Either way, hope is on the horizon." Domin commented.

I stopped focusing on the things he was saying and began to stare at Dani. She was eager to suggest her ideas for designing the homes, but I wasn't listening to that either.

I could see dried tears on her cheeks, it was glossy from the reflection of the sunset on her face. She began to make shapes with her hands of what we could put in our house, and she was just all-around excited to be able to express her ideas. I smiled a little and turned back to Carl. His gaze seemed unenthusiastic; he must've been staring at me while I was staring at Dani… how embarrassing.

"Uh, um, so we'll have Dani be the one to design the inside of our little home!" I yelled out. Dani agreed with me quickly and Carl began to set up to help the other people make their own axes.

"Hey Sky… this was a great idea and all, but how do I make an axe? This seems way too fancy for rocks and sticks." I nodded. It was rude of me to expect that much.