Hunger Games

The Broken Walls

I heft up my bow, slinging it over my shoulder. Beside me, Jerome laces his paw around an iron axe.

"Biggums, how much you got on your head?" I ask, searching through my knapsack.

Jerome swiftly pulls up his sleeve and swipes the screen, scrolling through the chat. "Uh... I don't know. The last bounty I saw before I stopped paying attention was zero."

[Flashback]

"I wanna do a Hunger Games where we can bring our own weapons!"

"Okay."

{Later}

"So what DID you bring?"

"Uhm..." Momentary searching of pockets. "A pencil."

[Flashback end]

I feel a grin blossom on my face but it quickly dissipates when another person jumps Jerome. I snarl and hurl an arrow at the man, who squeaks and leaps back only to get an axe to the back of the head. I get a foreign surge of savage pleasure when the cannon for the man booms. I sigh through my nostrils, however, and take the chain armor from the corpse before pawing through the man's bag and discovering an iron sword. I grin wickedly and tuck it into his belt before inclining my head towards the hills off in the distance and running with Jerome.

I hear a frantic beeping from my chat, so I lift my wrist and find a flashing red screen with bold white letters that scares the crap out of me: A MUTTATION IS AFTER YOU.

I must have made a muffled shrieking noise or something, because Jerome gives me an odd look and says, "You alright, Mitch?" I open my mouth to say "No way in hell, because there's a fucking mutt after me", but I indistinctly hear a familiar rumble of anger, and I hiss out between my teeth as explanation, "Mutt."

I catch sight of a large wolf-like creature in the distance, with a shaggy beard-like excess of fur near its throat, and hold in a laugh. It looks ridiculous, with its collar jingling, but I've learned not to underestimate mutts ever since one tore me apart.

"Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, you're backing into the—!"

The rest of Jerome's sentence is lost in a loud exploding noise, and I realize where we are just as I'm slammed into the ground with extraordinary force. I'm lucky I realized at the last second and turned onto my shoulder, but it still hurts, so I lay there, paralyzed by pain and shock, and Jerome crouches next to me in a patch of tall grass.

"Mitch. Don't. Move," he bites out between his fangs. I try to reply with a casual response, along the lines of "I can't move anyway, it hurts to breathe at this point" but I can't even part my jaws, so I mentally berate myself for my stupidity instead. I helped design this particular arena, so I should've realized that we are at the end of the dome, and I have just hit the force field. It's a pale white, but it still takes a good eye to see the transparent wall. I know that the effects of hitting the field is paralysis and the possible risk of breaking something, and judging from the pain in my ankle, that risk has been justified.

I stare hard at the mutt. It stops at the edge of the field regarding the air, as though it can see the wall. I wouldn't be surprised, what with the muttations' enhanced field of vision, but what I don't expect is it crashing right through, leaving a mutt-shaped hole in the now-visible dome. Several tributes appear from the tree line, and using my somewhat hazy vision from the smoke, I identify the nine tributes as all but two. I make a strangled sound as I realize since the game's functions have been interrupted, the tributes who have passed will stay dead forever, stuck as a spectator. Jerome seems to have realized this as well, because he slaps a paw over his mouth, a choked gasp escaping the confines of his fangs.

He lifts me, but I shake him off, the paralysis wearing off. "Gamemaker Bajan Canadian!" I shout into the air, knowing the backup systems should be able to reboot. There's a momentary silence, then a crackling female voice says calmly, "Gamemaker Bajan Canadian logged."

"/tpall BajanCanadian!"

"Performing."

The two remaining tributes appear, looking dazed, and I nod before calling again. "/tpall hub!"

"Performing."

As the flickering dome disappears, I hear the levelheaded "Logging Gamemaker Bajan Canadian off" hitch at the end of the sentence.

[...]

Everyone in the hub server is surprised to see eleven scraggly tributes in appear in the spawn point, and even more when several start to sob quietly. I slump against one of the pillars, a choking feeling overtaking me. And then I realize I have recorded the whole thing.

My hand goes to the headphones fitted carelessly on my head. I say, in a quivering voice, "G-guys... Th-that... Just h-happened..." My hand clicks the camera off.

Jerome sits next to me, his paws shaking, his iron axe lying, forgotten, in the center.

"Oh, my Notch. Are you guys okay?" I've never been so happy to hear that voice in my life. I turn towards the voice and see the glint of amethyst and go— butter before someone glomps me. I turn on the camera again and say, with the same shaking voice despite my annoyed grunt, "H-hey, we're back, a-and hi Sky. I-I've never been so happy t-to see your ugly f-face!"

Sky frowns at the obvious stutter, but plays along anyway. "I am not ugly!" He studies himself in the camera. "In fact, I'm pretty handsome..."

I roll my eyes and say, "Y-yeah, okay, I-I'll keep that i-in mind." I fumble a bit before my fingers find the button and I click it, and as soon as they're off, I hunch into the wall with a terrified moan.

Jerome gives me a strange look, halfway between concerned and scared, and offers to remove the chain armor. I vaguely nod, and he quietly slips off the chest plate and the boots.

I don't want to be babied, especially by Jerome because of the whole #Merome thing (It's an interesting idea actually, and I ship it), but I feel so shaken that I just let him.

Sky gives me a quizzical look. "You're gonna upload that?"

I let air hiss between my teeth. "Anything to let them think I'm okay."

A sad smile. "You really care about them, don't you."

"Yeah, all through the Kick." I wince at Ty's unsympathetic tone, his cutting voice. He went through the torture of seeing his friend get banished from a group he thought he could trust. I know that even Sky's friendship with him was marred by the Kick. He was and and still is nineteen, and that incident forced him to close his heart, to refuse to make new friends for fear of losing them all over again. He, in a way, is protecting me, guarding me from the danger that I must ever do that again.

"Hold still." A quiet, albeit placid, voice interrupts me. I recognize it, first place it as warm, friendly, laughing and unable to stop. Then I'm flooded with distinct sounds of crying, of the voice, cracked and broken and defeated, then finally here. I can hear the utter terror frozen on his tongue, the sadness crippling his tone. I look up to face him and freeze.

The depression that he obviously went through has stolen much from him, from the little fat that he had (even through the cloak I can easily count his ribs) to his menacing aura (I feel almost sorry for him until I remember that I did this to him, and guilt consumes me again).

Seto's pale hand ghosts over my ankle, and I make a noise of bemusement. It doesn't hurt anymore.

The sorcerer's honey-brown eyes lock with my own hazel ones, and I can see fear in their amber depths. Then he looks away to hunch at a pillar on the opposite side.

I tap at my headset, and soon the same female voice from earlier says, "Uploading video..."

I manage to coax a small smile (more like a grimace) from somewhere deep inside me and stagger to my feet, managing to avoid Ty's hostile glare and Seto's depressed eyes as he looks down, his hood and chin-length hair falling over his face.

I shout "GAMEMAKER BAJAN CANADIAN" and everyone there stares at me like I'm nuts until the calm voice responds. "Welcome back, Sir. Gamemaker Bajan Canadian logged."

I swallow. "Tribute status on Hunger Games Arena 11."

There is a moment of silence, then the system replies: "Muttation Tribute sisispace1 untraceable. Spectator Tributes cat0922, rainbowcat1124, Toxictiger18943, MidnightDark04, invaderlime, Fallen_Snipez, endscape_9, billboy2, khorneflakes99, and Doughtnut_2391 detectable in Arena 11. Extricate?"

Hope surges into me. "Please."

There's an initial pause and a clicking sound, then a beeping. "Unable to perform task. Please, reboot server and try again."

I get the strange urge to facepalm, but resist it, instead glancing down at my wrist chat, which is sparking and obviously broken. This time I really do facepalm, and Ty gives me a strange look before disconnecting himself from the server's network system.

I yank Jerome's arm and start tapping in the chat. This is going to be a long night.

[...]

"Do you know sisispace1?"

I sigh again. "Yeah. Nice guy, pretty into video games. His name's Ross."

Jerome pulls back his lips, showing his fangs. "I knew cat0922 and Doughnut_2391. Boyfriend and girlfriend. Completely devoted."

"What were their names?"

"Eve and Hugo."

I make an attempt at humor. "Well, this is depressing."

"Tell me about it."

A voice behind us makes me start, and I whirl around, my bow drawn back. Jerome is growling in a feral way, his Betty clamped between his teeth.

Seto smiles at me, a hint of sadness dabbling in his voice. "It's terrible, isn't it? All of those people may never see their loved ones again, and this time..." His expression darkens to something resembling utter depression. "This time they can't escape."

I realize what he's talking about as he walks away. He means that they cannot suicide, nor drive themselves to hunger, any sort of death.

I wince. I hear the reference.

[...]

Eve's pale, translucent hand wraps around Hugo's.

"We're stuck here, right."

Hugo doesn't dare contradict her. She would be able to tell straightaway if he is lying. "Yeah."

Kaitlyn and Kathryn are hovering a few feet away. Kaitlyn rifles through a chest, while Kathryn taps away on her chat with amused glee on her face, placing higher and higher bounties on the heads of the other spectators.

Eve sighs, running her pale hand through her iridescent locks. Kathryn is still younger than she and Hugo, only ten years old. She doesn't understand that they will stay like this forever, unable to go back to their loved ones. Her eyes suddenly light up. "Hugo."

"What?"

"Just follow me."

She flies through the shattered remains of the barrier.

A/N: OH MAN THIS IS SO INTENSE!

Me: *looks down at ground* Most of you may have noticed that I have deleted When Squids Strike.

Sky: WHYYYYY?

Me: *throws out hands for emphasis* I'M SORRY! But, you gotta understand. When Squids Strike was one of my first, most amateurish fanfictions. I couldn't keep it because it reminded me too much of stuff that is past. It reminded me just how much my writing skills were crap, and in particular it reminded me of a very successful fanfic of mine that was shut down. No questions. No PMs asking about it, please.

Sky: ...

Me: So... This fanfic is here to replace it.

Star-gaze, Nightmare Army... And good-night.