ATTENTION: DOUBLE UPDATE - REMEMBER TO READ THE OTHER CHAPTER BEFORE THIS - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
Yes, this will do indeed.
.oOo.
Audra Zimanski, 16
District Five Female
1 Kill
Before she opens her eyes, she realizes that she's slept in.
Audra opens one eye to see the daylight streaming onto her face, rolls over, and screams a muffled curse into her pillow.
She's missed her chance to poison their breakfast, she already knows that. Looking out the window to confirm that they're gone, she sees nothing but an empty cornucopia and the remains of their breakfast. Some kind sponsor had spent a fortune to get that in for them, she notices.
Oh well, she'll get a chance later on. For now, she'll have to wait until they get back to the chalet to properly deal with them.
Maybe poisoning the remainder of their food will be enough.
But it's now the sixteenth day, and she knows that if she doesn't do something now she'll never do it. Yesterday, she simply watched them in the morning - trying to figure out what they were like, who would be the easiest the fight and the easiest to goad into a fight they can't win. She knows how people work. It's her greatest strength, and she hasn't been able to put it to good use just yet.
She's sure she'll get her chance to do so. She just has to wait.
Counting to ninety, Audra makes sure that they're truly gone before walking down the stairs. She's slow and certain, making sure that no one's slept in the cornucopia or is in the chalet to make sure that she doesn't steal their supplies.
They're all gone.
She's quick to let a few drops of the final thing that she requested from the game makers into the remainder of their meal - the poison splashes against the scrambled eggs and cinnamon rolls that have made up their meal, then sinks into a few unassuming pieces of bacon. It'll be impossible to see - until one of them eats it. Then, they'll start to choke a few minutes later, foam bubbling out of their mouth and their face turning red until they collapse on the ground. It'll be too late to vomit the mess out by that point. They'll be dead before they have a chance to fight against it.
She was saving it for something truly special - an alliance that she'd break apart, an ally who wouldn't suspect her deceit, but this will do for now.
Yes, this will do indeed.
Sprinkling the poison into the rest of their food, Audra is satisfied once everything is contaminated - everything except a few bags of dried jerky. She takes those for herself, walking back up the stairs to make sure that she'll have sustenance as she waits it out. She'll have a long day ahead of her.
Considering, of course, that the careers don't come back inside like they did yesterday - a raging storm kept them caged in for the entire day. She would have tried to poison it then, but posting sentries through the night worked too well for her to slip into the cornucopia.
As the hours pass and she quietly eats the jerky, she listens for cannons. None, unfortunately, signal the death of one of the careers, and she settles into her hiding spot to wait out the rest of the day.
But then she hears the beeping of a sponsor gift.
It's loud, shrill, and echoes through the room like clockwork - until she scrambles towards it and twists open the lid. Inside, there's a green liquid that bubbles inside of a glass tube - something that she won't touch with bare hands. To ensure that it is what she thinks it is, Audra drops a piece of jerky into the liquid. It dissolves like it was never there to begin with, and Audra cracks a dry smile.
No, yesterday wasn't her day. But this is telling her something more - she's not going to use poison. She'll have to be more aggressive than that to win the games today.
Yes, today will work just fine.
.oOo.
He doesn't want to watch his friends die.
.oOo.
Dimitri Muller, 16
District Two Male
3 Kills
They're starting to get antsy.
It's difficult, trudging through the snow and searching for an enemy that won't come out, but Dimitri swallows away his annoyance and keeps skiing after his allies. The twins are starting to get worn out, but they refuse to quit - none of them want to stop just short of finding the tribute.
Of course, it's hard to keep focus when they're on the sixteenth day and they haven't had a decent sleep in over two weeks.
"Do you think she'll have gone somewhere on the other side of the mountain?" Triton asks to no one in particular, shimmying up a slope before bending his knees and pushing off to ski down the next. "She could be anywhere, I guess - though she's probably not close to us. I don't think that she'd be anywhere near the chalet - she shouldn't be. She shouldn't be."
"We'll find her soon enough," Thetis says confidently. "The game makers can't lead us on forever - they have to induce some sort of conflict if we don't find her in a reasonable amount of time. We'll either find her or be given a map to her if we keep being stupid."
"Do you think it'll have a little X to mark the spot where she is?" Triton cracks, and they all laugh. The tension's been broken for now, but they're still tired and crabby from taking so long. Sooner or later, something's going to break, and Dimitri will be at the receiving end of it.
They'll just have to find the girl from Five before it gets to that point.
"She should be easy to spot with those scars and all," he murmurs to the others. "Poor girl - I wonder what happened to her face to make it that way. Imagine living with that for the rest of your life."
"Didn't she talk about it in the interviews?" pipes up Thetis, frowning. "I remember some sort of story - she was like a little girl or something. It was funny."
"Well, don't think too hard about it. We're going to have to kill her sooner or later: chatting about her woes and such will only make it harder," Triton advises. Thetis shoots him a thumbs up, and Dimitri gives a curt nod. He's not worried about bonding to her - she's here through the will of the gods, after all. If she's supposed to win, she'll win, and if she's not, she'll die.
The thought that his allies might die by her hand passes through his mind, and he shudders a bit. He knows that they're volunteers, - it's a refrain that passes through his mind whenever his conscience decides that he doesn't feel guilty enough - he knows that they shouldn't be here, but they're his friends now.
He doesn't want to watch his friends die.
It's hard to imagine what will happen if it's just him and the two twins after they find the girl.
They keep skiing through the woods, when Thetis lets out a scream and pushes them back. "Run! Run! Run!"
Dimitri looks past her and his heart drops, his eyes barely registering the wolves that are running at full tilt towards them before he turns and skis like his life depends on it.
It might.
He takes the lead, moving faster than Thetis and Triton as they make their way through the forest. The wolves are starting to gain on them, but they move faster and faster until they're out of the woods and almost at the chalet. Dimitri nearly falls at the end, but he wrenches off his skis and tosses them back at the wolves. Then he opens the door, stumbling into the chalet and trying to breathe, breathe, catch his breath before he collapses in a heap.
But then he turns around and pushes Thetis and Triton out of the way - the girl from Five is here.
And she's tossing a tube of acid right at them.
.oOo.
She's ready for them.
.oOo.
Audra Zimanski, 16
District Five Female
1 Kill
The acid misses, regretfully, - although a bit hits the arm of the boy from Two - and Audra darts back to the safety of the stairs. She wants to have the upper hand in this fight. After all, she's facing three other tributes.
Her axe is right where she left it, leaning against the top of the stairs and ready for Audra to grab it right away. She takes it and brandishes the weapon, glaring at the three careers. "I might be the next to die, but I won't give up that easily. I'll promise you that."
"Good luck," the boy from Two says, then launches his first attack.
Audra barely dodges the sword that's meant for her ribs, twirling around and running back into the top floor. She runs past the ski room, shoving a few into the path of the incoming careers, then hurries into the nearest bedroom that the game makers had evidently thought the careers would use - something that they had ignored altogether.
She shoves the bedframe in front of the door that she's just locked on the careers, piling as much as she can in front of it to provide resistance against the careers. Then she grabs her axe, preparing to throw it at the first teen to enter the room and attack her. She's ready for them.
A few minutes pass before she gets her chance, the careers cursing as they try to break into the room through sheer force. The bedframe's too big to simply shove out of the way, however, and it takes one massive push from all three of the careers to send it flying away from the door. After a few slams against the locked door, the boy from Four is in - and Audra's axe hurtles towards his chest.
It doesn't miss the blonde-haired boy, yet it doesn't hit him. It's the handle of the axe that hits the boy in his chest, causing him to yell out in pain and stumble back as the axe falls onto the floor and hits it with a clatter. He tries to catch his breath - the wind's been knocked clean out of him - and Audra rushes forward to grab her axe.
The boy from Two is faster than her, though.
When the boy from Two pushes the axe behind him and leaps towards her, Audra runs from him. She's nimbler than the sturdy boy from Two, and she can leap onto furniture and away from the blade of his broadsword. She's stopped, however, when the girl from Two pushes against her and sends her tumbling into the window.
"You've been… a nuisance," the boy from Four says as he attempts to get up. "Thetis, are you ready?"
"Ready as I'll ever be," the girl answers. But she doesn't get a chance to swing her foreign weapon into Audra's chest just yet.
That's because instead of lying still and waiting to die, Audra tackles the girl from Two under they come crashing through the window and into the snowdrifts below.
.oOo.
No, they're not going to stop.
.oOo.
Triton Clifford, 17
District Four Male
3 Kills
He and Dimitri simply stand and gape at the sight below for a moment - the girl from Five and Thetis grappling in the snow for her naginata, each trying to make sure that they're in control of the situation. Neither seems to be winning, yet the Five lands a decent punch against Thetis' nose before scrambling to grab the weapon.
She doesn't get the chance to use it, though - Triton leaps down before she even reaches the naginata.
"Triton!" Thetis yells, shaking him out of the stupor he fell into with his leap. "Use your trident - do something!"
Triton nods, spinning around and trying to hit the girl over the head with his golden weapon. But she's making her way out of the snow, and it smashes into her leg as a crowbar would. The girl screams, but she kicks back at Triton and stumbles out of the snow.
She's lucky - Dimitri comes tumbling down to the spot where she was lying in just a few seconds ago.
Now the three are chasing the girl back into the building, trying to catch her before she has the chance to run away from them and lock the door. Triton is first, and he pushes his hand into the door in an effort to stop it from closing before she smashes it onto his wrist. He screams from the pain, but Thetis is right behind him to throw the door open and hurry after the girl. They're not going to stop until they've caught her.
No, they're not going to stop.
The girl hurries into the cornucopia and finds a spare pile of arrows, stringing one to a bow and aiming at Triton. He ducks, and it heads right towards Dimitri - lodging itself in the arm where he was burnt by the acid.
The boy from Two shouts, more out of surprise than anything, and tosses the arrow away.
The girl keeps stringing arrows and aiming - and her aim is true. She almost catches Triton in the neck once with a good shoot, but his trident deflects the arrow away to clatter harmlessly on the floor. But even as she keeps aiming, she realizes that she's running out of ammunition - so after one last shot, she throws away the bow before starting to toss crates at them.
The first of the crates hits Thetis, trying to catch the girl by sneaking into the cornucopia, right in the chest. She's knocked backwards, and Triton winces in sympathy before getting hit by the second. He's knocked back into a weapons rack and stays there, trying to catch his breath. The girl tries to throw another crate at Triton, this time at his head, but Dimitri lunges forward and pushes it away in mid-air. She keeps throwing things at them - their food, sponsor gifts, weapons, assortments of items that she think will do damage. The assault leaves them battered and bruised, madly dodging items so that they won't be subject to a barrage of crates thrown at them once more. But they're dodging them well, and they're staying in one piece.
And suddenly, before any of them have a chance to realize what's happened, the girl from Five runs out of things to throw.
Thetis is the first to throw, her naginata hurtling through the air and embedding itself in the soft metal of the cornucopia. Unfortunately, it misses, and the girl runs at them with her axe raised above her head. She's about to throw.
And suddenly, she crumples, her broken frame wrapping around the trident that Triton's thrown into her chest.
As the girl keeps bleeding out, arms still clutching the trident, she looks up at the careers and mouths a few words.
Make it quick.
Triton obliges, a quick flick of his wrist slashing through the skin of her neck, and the girl sinks back with a sigh and a smile that lingers on her face, even as the cannon echoes through the arena.
The three look uncertainly at one another, all standing in the mess of the cornucopia and trying to make sense of what's happened.
Then, as they turn to fully face each other, Triton realizes what has them all on edge - there's no one left. No one but themselves.
The careers' last opponents are each other.
YEP
4th: Audra Zimanski, District Five Female; Killed by Triton Clifford. Created by TheMayflyProject.
If it wasn't one of these three, it would have been Audra. She was so, so, so fun - she was really done dirty by this arena, but she didn't let that stop her. She would have excelled and probably won this whole thing if she got a chance to socialize, make alliances, play the game, and twist everyone around her finger. All stars WHEN? But she was quite a nuanced character, taking what could have been a tragic backstory and turning it into quite the person. Audra was very fun to write, and I'm going to really miss having her in this arena. But I don't regret the victor, and I hope you guys won't either. Thank you so much, May, for Audra.
Final three! We'll have our victor tomorrow - who will win? Who won't? Any thoughts?
Thanks again for all of your support, you guys are amazing. I'm glad to have you with me through this.
Enjoy. Until our finale, TheAmazingJAJ