JACQUARD CROCK- Lacey Weaver
Some people have to deal with things most people don't even think about. Having a mental illness meant your enemy was your own brain and your fight had to be your entire life. Having an eating disorder meant your enemy was not only your own brain but also your own body. That had to be one of the most difficult lives I could think of. It wasn't fair Jacquard had to be so strong.
GAIUS MCCLELLAN- Flint Kenyte
"No way. Gaius?" I said when Edward and I saw the face in the ceiling. It wasn't good news. Sure it was good in a horrible way that a huge competitor was out, but Gaius' death meant two things: the Careers were together and the Careers would almost certainly win.
Nubu Sanders- District Twelve mentor
What do you do when the children you mentor aren't the ones that should win the Games? No child deserves to die and neither of them were born like that, but Scarlett and Gaius had so many demons. There were so many other children that were so much easier to root for. I wanted them all to come home but sometimes I did want some more than others.
District Twelve
There was no one to mourn for Scarlett. It was our own damnation that perhaps if anyone had ever loved her she wouldn't have been like this. They said she was a monster by birth but it was nurture that made her. We were glad to ignore her in favor of the pomp and circumstance surrounding Gaius' death. His brothers fired the salute and passed a folded flag to his father and awarded them a survivors' pension usually reserved for spouses and minor children. It was all a very heartwarming sort of funeral.
Flint Kenyte- District Two male (18)
"Hey, we're pretty close to the roof," I remarked as I looked at the wall-mounted map by the staircase. It wasn't really a map so much of a list of what important rooms were where but it did have an outline of the entire building and a star on the floor we were on. It looked like it was only two or three more floors until the roof.
"Wonder what happens if someone leaves. Like, just tries to leave," Edward said as he drew aimless circles in the air with his sword.
"Force-field, I guess," I said.
"Yeah," Edward said.
"You wanna go check it out?" I asked. "Might be a water tower or something. Maybe we could catch pigeons." The food in the scattered refrigerators and vending machines wouldn't last forever. It had already been more than a week. We'd already found some moldy sandwiches and rotten fruit in some of the lunch boxes.
"Sure," Edward said. He got up from where he was lounging and we crept out of our room and down the hall to the stairway. Really the only part that made me nervous about moving was the stairway. It was narrow and it was hard to run quickly up or down stairs. It was the only place we couldn't easily run away if we happened to see the Careers. But we didn't see them and made our way to the roof unmolested.
Once we got up there we of course had to throw something off the roof. "Boys will be boys" used to be said about boys acting out and not getting in trouble. By far the better use of the phrase was to describe things like throwing rocks off tall buildings to watch them fall. Or playing that stupid bloody-knuckles game that no one likes because it feels like some arcane rite of passage. So anyway we threw a rock off the roof. It was hard to see but it looked like it made it all the way down.
"Probably because it's not a person," Edward observed.
Once we'd seen all there was to see we headed back toward the door. As I was about to open it from the outside, it started to open from the inside. Edward was sort of behind where the door would open and I was right in front of it and an instant too late to slam it shut, leaving me with the brunt of the decision.
Probably it's one of the outliers, I thought. Lacey or Fleur would come through the door and end up way more scared of us than we were of her. Whoever it was would turn and flee and Edward and I would wait a few moments so they didn't think we were chasing them.
All that went out the window when it was Alysanne who appeared in the doorway. I didn't have much time to react so I went with punching her in the face.
Alysanne Audren- District Six female (15)
I opened the door to the roof and a fist came through it and punched me in the nose. My head snapped back and I took a step backward, bumping into Arroyo. I put a hand up to my bleeding nose as Quarla and Arroyo slipped around me and smashed into the door, pushing it open and knocking back whoever was behind it. I was a little slower to react, since my head was buzzing and my vision was clouded by the tears that sprang to my eyes when my nose most likely broke.
When I ran through the door to join the fight I saw that Flint had grabbed Arroyo's spear and they were both trying to throw each other to the ground while beyond them Quarla was circling Edward and looking for the best way past his sword. He swung it at her and she threw a knife at his hand. He winced and dropped the sword and I saw the calculations in his eyes as he reevaluated fight versus flight. He ran past Flint, clearly hoping his friend would come with, but Flint was too entangled with Arroyo to notice. All of this happened in the two seconds I stood deciding which ally to aid. Flint and Arroyo were both a lot larger than I was and were so close together I would as likely trip Arroyo up as help him, so I ran after Quarla and Edward.
Edward was as fast as you would expect someone running for his life to be but he had a disadvantage: he was running in a serpentine pattern as Quarla threw knives at him. One of them hit the side of his ribcage and he stumbled, putting a hand to the wound. Quarla was catching up and there just wasn't much roof left. Edward was going to have to turn- and lose a lot of momentum- soon unless he was planning to run right off the edge.
Arroyo Cardoso- District Four male (17)
Flint was a formidable opponent and I wasn't at all counting the fight as won. As soon as I came out of the door Flint grabbed my spear and tried to throw me to the ground and take it. He did throw me, sort of, but I held on and he ended up halfway on the ground with me. We rolled around on the ground trying to throw elbows and kicks without letting go of the spear between us. It looked for all the world like two fellow students roughhousing.
Where's Alysanne and Quarla? Alysanne had taken a good shot to the nose but that wouldn't keep her away long. And Quarla was gone as soon as I went through the door, not to mention Flint's ally, who I'd seen in the corner of my eye and had to be Edward. Fighting against Flint I had to take the toss-up between not knowing where my enemies were and taking my eyes of Flint and giving him an opening to stab me in the face. I caught some fractured glimpses of my surroundings as we struggled. It looked like Edward had fled and Quarla had gone after him. Alysanne must have correctly guessed that trying to get between me and Flint was risky at best and went with Quarla to finish off Edward so they could both come back and help me.
Nothing is sacred in the Games. Not even the bro code. Flint was a street fighter and he did what he had to do. He shoved into the spear, pushing me back, and instead of trying to get on top of me like I'd expected, he kneed me in the groin. Tears sprang to my eyes and I had to muscle past that pain you can never get used to. I leaned right into my obscured vision and headbutted Flint. Then his eyes watered and we flailed at each other almost blindly. Pain like lightning spiderwebbed through my fingers on the spear when Flint bit my hand. I clenched harder and hissed in pain as I gave tit for tat and bit his ear.
A cannon interrupted both of us.
Alysanne Audren- District Six female
Edward sprinted toward the edge of the building. I'd heard he had some background in parkour or something. He probably had very quick reflexes and was hoping to throw Quarla off with a sharp turn. He reached the short raised ledge at the roof's edge and lifted a leg to hop up onto it. Quarla stopped sharply, arms wheeling as she arrested her momentum before she went barreling off after Edward, who apparently planned to go out on his own terms. He pushed up off the ledge with his foot and I watched in amazement when he launched into a graceful backflip, arcing several feet in the air as his legs went over his head and he came back around behind Quarla. As he was falling behind her he drew in his knees and shot both legs out like a piston. They hit Quarla square in the small of her back and she fell forward- right off the edge. Edward landed in a heap as I stood to stunned to even know what to do. He got up and darted back toward Flint.
I snapped myself out of it and ran to the edge, hoping that maybe somehow Quarla had grabbed something and I could pull her up. I reached the edge and saw Quarla disappearing far, far under me. She was tumbling and falling through space and there was nothing at all she could do to stop what was happening.
It was a tall, tall building. I didn't know it could take that long to fall.
Quarla Hydrargyrum- District One female (16)
Edward's kick slammed into my upper back. I knew what was going to happen before it happened. I saw the open air beyond the ledge change angles as I was pushed out far over the edge. My heels left the ground and I went to step forward but there was nothing there. My arms circled in vain as I tilted forward. I reached that nightmarish point where my stomach fell and my balance shifted like I'd leaned back too far in a chair and then I pitched off face-first.
It was like swimming through water I couldn't touch. Wind whistled in my ears and whipped into my face harder than I would have thought. For a second, then two, I couldn't believe it had happened. I couldn't believe that everything I worked for had been ripped away with one motion and my life had gone from years to seconds faster than I could process it.
It's a tall, tall building, the thought went disjointed through my head. I didn't know the math. I just knew it took longer than I thought to fall. I'd been falling all my life, really. The world had been wanting to do this to me since I was born. It was only through determination and perseverance that I had staved them off for this long.
I'm never going to be pretty. Almost a relief. Never again would anyone look at me with disgust. My life was mine alone for the rest of my life. Short as it was, for the rest of my life. Just me and the tumbling air around me. And just by myself, when no one was there to remind me with their scorn and horror and revulsion, I could say that I liked me. I was kind and brave and able to endure so much. Inner beauty didn't mean I magically didn't care about my outward appearance but it was a treasure I could now admit was worth more. And when I hit the pavement my body would be just that- a body. Not a face to look at or scars to hate. Just tissues and cells that held a soul.
Alysanne Audren- District Six female (15)
Quarla was dead. Edward was already running toward Arroyo and together he and Flint would overwhelm him. As cold as it was, this was the moment to go. There was another staircase on the opposite side of the roof from where my we'd come up. I ran for it and left Arroyo to a fate I couldn't change. The Career pack was dead.
Arroyo Cardoso- District Four male (17)
A cannon interrupted me and Flint. A few seconds later, no one had appeared. That could only mean one thing. Either Quarla or Alysanne had died and the other was too wounded to come to me. At any second Edward could come running in to pick up his sword and help Flint. I couldn't fight two at once so I bit the bullet. I shoved Flint away and let go of the spear, kicking out and pushing myself away as I did. He landed a foot or so away and I scrambled to my feet and fled down the stairs while he was still getting up and Edward was just running into view.
10th place: Quarla Hydrargyrum- pushed off building by Edward
I already had this Arena planned and when Edward's form mentioned parkour I knew I wanted this to happen. It was just a matter of which Career and I ended up using Quarla. Quarla was extremely unpopular in-universe but I'm not surprised she was pretty popular with readers. In this year of very unconventional Careers she was one of the more devoted and active. She was also stoic and patient and kind. She went through so much before she even got to the Games and she had such small desires. Her whole life was unfair and so is the Games. Tragedy through and through. Thanks Plat for trusting me with someone you had difficulty getting into other stories. Hope I showed her respect.