Chapter 2
Twenty-four tributes stood on twenty-four pedestals, surrounded by a dense mountain forest, complete with rivers, boulders, and wild animals. In the middle of this clearing was the Cornucopia, filled with food, weapons, and supplies. Forty-eight eyes looked longingly at what could be theirs.
Three.
Namie crossed her arms, reluctant, but determined.
Two.
Masaomi Kida braced himself, remembering what Izaya had said.
One.
Go.
Rio raced into the forest without even an attempt at the Cornucopia.
Izaya sprinted lightly to the center, found what he was looking for, and raced back out, before most people had even started moving. Soon after him, about eighteen of the tributes ran to the large structure. Pushing, struggling, shoving, blood. Tributes grabbing what they could, but not so much as to make others attack them. Suddenly, they all froze at a loud yell.
"Stop fighting and GET OUT OF MY WAY!"
They scattered as Shizuo ran to the center, hefting several logs that he had picked up. "I HATE VIOLENCE!" He tossed the logs at the retreating figures, but they saw them coming and dodged easily. He wasn't trying that hard, of course. No one really bothered him as much as Izaya did.
The game masters sat back in their chairs as Shizuo followed the rest of the tributes into the woods. Yes, this year was going to be interesting. They grinned at each other.
"Did you see that monster?"
"Yeah. The other tributes better watch out, that's for sure."
After a few minutes of congratulating each other, one of them suddenly frowned. "Something's strange."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know. Something just seems... off."
They stared at the screens for a minute, and another suddenly said, "I've got it."
"What?"
"No one's died yet. That's gotta be a first."
Suddenly, their attention was brought back to the screens as they heard a tapping sound, and the cheerful face of Orihara Izaya filled one of the monitors. "Hello," he drawled. "Ready to see something unexpected?"
They waited for him to expound, wondering absently how he had found a camera so quickly.
"I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're all nodding excitedly. Do you see the girl over there?" he pushed the camera to the left, exposing a shadowed bit of forest. Trees were scattered throughout the scene, and several bushes lined a deep pit. In the middle of the screen, they could see Kamichika Rio attempting to hide in a bush. "She's going to die. I'm not going to draw my knife, and I won't touch her. Are you ready?"
"Ah, Rio." He walked away from the camera he had found on a tree. "Long time no see. It's been what? Five minutes? Ten?"
"Not long enough."
Strolling over to the bush, he crouched down as if he was talking to a small child. "I can't help but notice that there's a perfectly suitable jumping spot a couple feet behind you, and yet you haven't offed yourself yet."
She didn't reply.
"Of course, I thought as much. You're just not the type. You think your motives are big and deep and dark and important, but they're honestly shallow."
"They're not shallow!"
"Shallow enough for you not to act on them, obviously. You just sit back and wait and worry, and you let things happen. Just face it, Rio: you're not a mover. You get moved. You can't even move yourself. But like I said, I'm not surprised. You won't kill yourself because you can't." He stood up again, turning his back. "See you around, if one of the other tributes doesn't see you first."
"You're wrong!"
"Am I now?"
"You strut around, thinking you know everything about everyone, but you don't! You're not a god; you're just a freak in a furry coat!"
"Perhaps I don't know absolutely everything in this world. Perhaps there's quite a lot I don't know. But I do know what kind of person you are. From your perspective, isn't that the only knowledge that truly matters?"
There was no answer.
"See? You can't argue. You know you have no grounds, and no true reason that will change you from a pawn to a player. You're just not capable."
All eyes in the control room were glued to the conversation that was going on in front of them. The girl's face went from depressed to annoyed to furious, but Izaya's face maintained its disturbing grin. As he finally walked away from the girl, the game masters saw her get to her feet, determination and anger written in her clenched hands and shaking legs.
"What is she-"
She stepped toward the edge of the pit.
"She's trying to prove him wrong!"
"She's going to do it!"
And she was. Toes over the rocks at the top of the precipice, she gazed down at the sharp boulders at the bottom of her fall. A gentle breeze teased her hair into going in every direction, giving the whole scene an otherworldly feel.
"He hasn't turned around."
"He's not even going to look?"
She leaned forward and spread out her arms. Her feet left the rocks.
A cannon went off.
Izaya's smile only grew wider.
Shadows of twisting branches moved across darkened ground, the trees casting them swaying back and forth. Twigs snapped underfoot as a panting Ryuugamine Mikado trotted onto the scene. He frantically turned his head back and forth, scanning the forest for other tributes. At last, he stopped and leaned back on a tree trunk, clutching a bag of provisions to his chest.
"Ryuugamine-kun?"
His head snapped up. "Anri?"
A pretty girl with short black hair and glasses stepped out from behind a tree trunk, arms behind her back.
"You were so quiet, I didn't know you were there." He smiled. "I'm glad you're okay, though. I mean," a faint blush rushed across his cheeks, "I, uh, would be really sad if you got hurt."
"I know how you feel about me, Mikado-kun," she said quietly, "which is what makes this even harder than it would have been."
"W-what do you mean?" His smile faded slightly.
As she pulled her right arm in front of her, the faint light streaming through the tree branches glinted off something long, sharp, and metal.
Mikado swallowed. "Did you take that sword from the Cornucopia?"
"Yes, they knew I would want it." She took a step toward him.
"Hey! Hey, Anri," his eyes widened in fear. "There's no need to take me out; I would never hurt you! And besides, I thought we were going to n-"
"You may love me," she interrupted, getting closer, taking step after step, "but I cannot love. I cannot love you; I cannot love anyone." She raised her sword, bringing the flat of it against his right cheek. "This is about survival."
"But I'm your friend!" He whimpered, inching to his left. "And what about-"
Anri simply took the sword and brought it to the other side of his face. "There are no friends in the games. I'm doing this as a warning: stay out of my way, Mikado."
"What are you doing?"
Leaning in close to him, she whispered, "Being a friend. Trust me." In a second, she brought the sword down, missing his face, but slicing a line of skin off the inside of his arm.
"Gah!" he yelled, clapping a hand to his forearm to try and stop the bleeding.
Taking several steps backward, Anri sheathed her sword. "Remember what I said, Mikado." She stepped back into the twisting shadows, and seemed to disappear.
Mikado panted and tried his best to hide the smile that was fighting to escape. It would all be okay, just like Izaya said it would.
A camera panned over the mountain forest landscape, overlooking rocks and moss and scattered tree trunks until it focused on a pair of kids walking down a path. They seemed to be laughing and talking with each other, not respecting the fact that they were supposed to be fighting to the death. The boy even had a book out. It must have been left in the Cornucopia for him, but it was certainly an odd thing to find in a game of survival.
"Yeah, Edward and Winry make a good couple; I'm not arguing that point," the girl bubbled, "but I still stand by the fact that Roy and Riza are simultaneously the most beautiful and the most tragic couple in the series. After all, they're clearly madly in love with each other, but can't take it to the next level because of the military's fraternization laws!"
The boy turned a page in his book, shaking his head slightly, eyes seeming to be stuck in a permanent squint. "She could always quit the military."
"Of course she can't quit the military! The reason she joined was to protect him, and if she quit, it would be like she loved him less, and that would be completely out of character!"
"I guess they're destined for an eternity of kissing behind closed doors. It could be worse." He lifted his head. "Hey, what do you think of this spot?"
"Hmm," she rubbed her chin, then smiled. "I think it's wonderful! I'll man this side if you'll take the other one." With that, she hid herself behind a large and mossy boulder.
"Got it. Mission 'Ambush Anyone Who Walks By' has officially commenced. Prepare to be impressed, Erika."
Erika giggled, still out of sight. "This is so exciting! It's like we're inside the plot of a super exciting book! Of course, we wouldn't be the main characters. Yumacci, you and I would be the side characters that people are always underestimating, kind of like Black Star and Tsubaki in Soul Eater. Dotachin would be… hmmm… probably Mifune. I guess that would mean Izaya would have to be Lord Death. He's definitely creepy enough, and he acts happy-go-lucky all the time."
"And he has his underlings, too. But the only one who questions Lord Death's motives is Death the Kid, while all of us question Izaya's motives."
"He reminds me of the witches in Macbeth. He'll say something completely innocent, like how you should eat potatoes instead of broccoli for dinner, and you'll think that he's not such a bad guy, and then it'll turn out that he somehow just started a war over broccoli and potatoes."
"Nothing's cut and dried with him. Even his facades have facades."
"Hey, Walker, did I tell you about that one time-"
"Shh! Someone's coming!"
They fell silent, and nothing could be heard but the faint trilling of genetically modified birds. Crunching footsteps eventually faded into existence, and Niekawa Haruna strode down the path toward the boulders, swinging her long dark hair over her shoulder as she glanced around. She gripped a short sword tightly with both hands.
As she walked between the two boulders on either side of the path, she suddenly swung her sword around, pointing it in the face of a smiling Erika, who had appeared out of nowhere. "Don't move," she growled, "or you'll lose your face."
Erika just smiled.
"It's not very heroic to threaten a girl who is clearly unarmed," a voice said.
Haruna whipped around to face a smiling Walker, his eyes still squinted closed. "This isn't about heroism," she replied. "It's about living."
"But if you don't live the right way," Erika was talking again, and Haruna turned back to her, "what's the point?"
Haruna suddenly realized that she wasn't holding her sword anymore. Her heart dropped, and she slowly turned around to look at Walker. He was still smiling, twirling the sword around playfully.
"You're Haruna-san, right?" asked Erika. "We've heard that you're pretty smart and skilled with a sword, so we're gonna be nice to you."
"We're going to hurt you, of course-"
"But you get to choose how we do it!"
"Now," Walker contemplated the sword he was holding, "I picked up some supplies at the Cornucopia, so you've got your pick of the lot. Tacks, fire, stuff I found along the way. Or I can use this beauty right here."
"Ooh, I didn't think of the sword! Good idea!"
Haruna had been trying to inch her way out from between the two kids, but they mirrored her every movement. "I thought you two were all about being heroic. That doesn't exactly reconcile with torturing someone, does it?"
"But we are being heroes," said Walker. "We're doing the right thing, honestly, but there's no rule about not having fun while we're doing it."
In a last ditch effort to save herself, Haruna lunged at one of the boulders, right between the two kids, and attempted to climb out of danger. She suddenly felt a tug on her legs, and she scraped back down the rock, landing on her back on the gravel path. Two smiling faces looked down at her.
"That was brave of you, but you just forfeited your choice of weapon," said Walker.
As Haruna panted nervously, Erika leaned down to her and whispered in her ear, "Don't worry. It's all part of the plan. It'll only hurt a little, but you've got to scream like it hurts a lot."
The game masters observed as Erika and Walker crouched over the prone figure of Niekawa Haruna. They couldn't see her face anymore, but, judging by the skill with which Walker wielded the sword and the screams that were reaching their ears from the microphones, they really wouldn't have wanted to see the act anyway.
"Check her vital signs; we want to be watching if they kill her."
One of the men clicked through several screens. "I'm bringing up the tracker right now."
"What do you see?"
"I've got- no, wait, it just went out. We've got nothing. She's dead."
A cannon went off, and Walker and Erika grinned. "Perfect. It's all going without a hitch so far."
"When do things not go according to plan with him?"
A gust of wind hit them from above, and they stepped back from the body, leaves and twigs swirling around them. Erika put a hand up to stop her bangs from getting in her eyes, and Walker shoved both hands into his pockets. He was no longer holding the sword.
Descending from the sky, a large metal claw slowly grabbed Haruna's limp body and brought it up to the waiting hovercraft. The craft swallowed up both claw and girl, and began to ascend and turn away from them.
Walker crossed his arms, staring up at the ship with his eyes still closed. "And then there were twenty-two."
I may or may not have forgotten to tell you which districts everybody was from. Thank you, Mel2140, for reminding me. I haven't been focusing on that, since the districts everyone comes from don't necessarily have that big of an effect, for reasons I'll talk about later. For those who are curious, though, here's the breakdown:
District 1 Izumi, Varona
District 2 Chikage, Non
District 3 Yumasaki Walker, Karisawa Erika
District 4 Ryuugamine Mikado, Sonohara Anri
District 5 Kyohei Kadota, Orihara Mairu
District 6 Heiwajima Kasuka, Hijiribe Ruri
District 7 Kida Masaomi, Saki
District 8 Heiwajima Shizuo, Niekawa Haruna
District 9 Kishitani Shinra, Harima Mika
District 10 Kuronuma Aoba, Yagiri Namie
District 11 Egor, Orihara Kururi
District 12 Orihara Izaya, Kamichika Rio
Please let me know what you think so far. Thank you to those who already have! Also, anybody know what Izaya's plan is?
Random question for all of you: I'm trying to finish reading the light novels right now, but I can't find a full translation of volume 11 anywhere. If someone sends me a link, I'll love them forever. Seriously.
~JW