Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new chapter for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Death, Chapter #24: Mistakes of the Many, focusing on Arena Day III with six tribute povs as well as a Capitol pov from Emrick to close out the chapter. We're slowly going through things, and eventually will reach the 'mid-games' where things will get somehow even more intense. Last time, Gemini got a new weapon, Cassiopeia sacrificed part of herself for performance, Magnus fired and didn't miss, and Porscha now swears vengeance... I've got another good chapter for you, and I am sorry about how long it has taken me to get this out to you, final exams and working a lot at my job came at the literal wrong time for me, but I have gotten a few updates for Red Silence out as well, which desperately needs subs if we want to have a full cast. Beyond that, I hope you guys enjoy Chapter #24: Mistakes of the Many.
""Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes." ~ Gandhi
Niklaus Peverell: District 8 Male P.O.V (18)
He shouldn't be upset, but he is. He shouldn't feel guilty for being upset, but he is. Most importantly, Niklaus Peverell feels that he shouldn't be in love with the girl currently pawning through one of her newly found backpacks, but he is. Every time he looks at her, his heart leaps into his throat, feeling the thrum of the organ against the side of the risen skin, tasting its murmur between his teeth and thickly over his tongue. Five faces have shone in the sky, and one day, in this arena, as they are now together in their third conjoined day together… will he see her up there?
What would she look like up there? What sort of emotion would her picture have to offer? In those sweet and warm eyes, would someone see fantastical perfection, or the desire to always be right? Would her skin luster and glow like it is now when he looks at her? Niklaus isn't sure, but he only hopes to delay the fact of seeing Poem Cavalli's face shine in the sky. It'll have to, eventually, whether it be by his hand or by someone else's, the guilt already sitting there on the base of his neck at the fact that he might watch someone else do the deed for him. She must be portrayed up into the heavens for he to continue on living, to get back home to Eight and kick Rudy Patterkinn and his dumb, stupid blazer in the teeth, to break that perfect nose of his… for that, she must die, the woman he believes he loves. Because she believes in him.
Poem rights herself, hair tied back firmly, though it is still in its wavy form, the humidity not helping – it is not helping him either, which his hair sticking to his forehead, beads of sweat trickling down to center at his earlobes, slicked and smelling of desperation. He looks at her for a second as she looks at him, then back over the landscape in front of them as she rummages more through the backpack.
"There's nothing really useful for the landscape…" she murmurs to herself, though he hears her, as it is painfully, awkwardly quiet, and it has been since they both awoke to a loud stomping underneath their skulls, the ground moving beneath them. Poem falls back onto her ankles, frowning. "Well, I guess we're going into the scorched land without two water canteens," the girl from Eight looks back at Niklaus with a sheepish smile. "Sorry," she says.
"We shared spit, semen, and you and I had sex…" Niklaus frowns to himself, almost with a dark chuckle. "Yet you're apologizing about us potentially having to share a water canteen. Priorities, Poem." He simply nods, keeping his lips parted, staring at her again. Yes, he is upset, he has decided. Choices, choices, choices.
Poem frowns once more, zipping up the backpack. "What's the matter, Niklaus?" She leans forward, rather more so digging her knees into the dirt and shuffling upwards towards him, the ground glistening in dark crystals under the similar black of her uniform. Poem reaches for his hand and kisses the top of it, her lips soft.
He jerks his hand back, shuddering. It… that… it's rude of him to do that, it's wrong of him to do that. A low gasp rises in his throat, as he takes a step back, rubbing his face with the same hand that had just been kissed. Poem gets to her feet immediately, backpack slung over her shoulder. "I- I can't kiss you right now, Poem," he tells her, straightening his back. "I have the-" his voice wavers, stuttering, words colliding with one another unceremoniously. "I have the choice."
Choices. Choices. Choices. Rudy Patterkinn does not give him any choices between getting on his knees and debasing himself versus a bullet to the brain if he doesn't pay up, for that white powder seems so alluring, with its tantalizing ghost kisses that glide up and down his arm. The Capitol does not provide him any choices as he witnesses the factory burn down to the ground, and he wants to go in and save people – perhaps he'd find his own face on some of the corpses in there, charred, and unrecognizable – while his father tackles him to the ground. It may be the only sensible thing his father has ever done, now that Niklaus thinks about it. Doesn't let him sacrifice himself to the great burn in the sky, the flames that eat up the already darkening veil above Eight, foul matter of industry spilling out of the smokestacks.
His foreman really does not offer him a choice when he hands him the orange pills and the baggies full of white powder, because his production is slipping, and Niklaus needs the money, he needs the money to bring home to a mother who doesn't exist, to a mother who won't be proud of her son. His father would simply through another beer bottle or steal another cigarette out of a Peacekeeper's back pocket who is not paying any attention to the matter at hand. All about choices, and Niklaus finally has the choice to feel how he wants to feel.
"I'm angry at you," he whispers, trying to not choke on his own words. If this were Rudy, he'd feel a hard hand pressing down into his shoulder blades, threatening and lethal, those blue ring octopus flashes in his eyes. Venomous tentacles laced around his throat, choking the life out of him.
"Angry at me?" Poem's voice is soft too, though perhaps it sounds loud to him given the silence that has permeated over the section of the arena they're in. He has taken his shoes off to bask in the warmth, where it is a serene sort of feeling rather than the uncomfortable sort raining off the sun in the sky. "Why?"
"You-" Niklaus's throat goes dry, he licking his lips. "You almost got us killed…" he tries to get the words out, he choking on the anguish. "Had you not gone running towards the water back on the beach then we wouldn't have fallen in and-"
"But… but we didn't-" Poem tries interrupting him. "And we found Malthos and-"
"Mimir," Niklaus corrects, "But that is besides the point, Poem! We nearly died down there in that cave system!"
After falling down into the ground beneath the arena, beneath the beach, it had been complete darkness. Niklaus knows his ankle is hurt – not broken or sprained, just in pain – crawling over to the sound of Poem's voice, who is on the verge of tears. When he finds her, their bags having been left up on the surface, with their weapons and water and rope and all of that… he nearly cries himself, as she has started. They stay down there, in that spot, without any light, until, shortly after that, it must be the anthem that they hear Cain Passionia talk about that causes the underground cave system they're in to glow up in a faint, but definitely visible blue light. It is a cave system, where their voices echo as they speak, guiding them through.
However, come the morning, after the anthem light finally has dissolved away, they are back into the black. That is… as Niklaus is about to give up hope, someone comes to them. He is not sure what it is, but there is a presence in front of them, where Poem is clenching down on his arm, whispering, and pointing. A glowing figure, and it seemed to speak to them inside their heads versus aloud, from what Niklaus could surmise. A person named Mimir, the Norse mythology god of advice and wisdom, to guide them to the surface.
Niklaus does burst into tears then, when following Mimir through the expansive networking system, the spirit of white light, in the shape of a person, yet without physical form, to an expansive chamber filled with supplies. Another cornucopia, in a way, as Niklaus finds it to be, picking up a short sword and a knife to hook at his belt. Several bags, and even a tent… Poem has weapons of her own… had Mimir not led the way, he knows they would've died, would've starved or lucid with dehydration or… well, Niklaus knows it would've have gone well.
Mimir vanishes with a wave, pointing to a cave entrance, and when the two run out of it, legs on fire, their chests rising and desperate to taste some clean air… they are standing in the scorched earth section of the arena, on a slope, overlooking a valley with many rocks and sparsely scattered pine trees… they're out, and Niklaus will not go back to that beach even if it would kill him to not go back.
Yet through it all, Poem has yet to apologize. Because of what she did, they could have and-
"We didn't die, though!" Poem yells at him, throwing her hands up in the air, though Niklaus is jolted out of concentration by a low rumbling beneath his feet, he shifting in place some while Poem steps towards him. Is… is the ground shaking? "God, Niklaus, I am sorry, but if you just focus on-"
His eyes widen as he sees something behind her, something behind Poem advancing quickly on them, though Niklaus isn't sure if it is directed towards them or just in their general direction. He leaps forward, knocking Poem to the ground, as there is an overturned boulder to shield them. Poem lets out an angry gasp as the two fall down together.
"What in the fuck do you think you're doing?" she goes to snarl, with her eyes filled with sudden anger, but he is clamping a hand down over her mouth, pressing a finger to his lips.
"Shhh!" he hisses at her, lowering his head. "Shut up, Poem, just for a second!" The ground continues to tremble beneath their feet, and then someone… something roars.
The two tributes from Eight peek their heads above the boulder, which is at least three or four feet tall, Niklaus's eyes widening in fright at the sight in front of him. The… the man, creature, being, thing… he can't quite tell, in front of them, is at least three of these boulders. Something, towering over a few of the pine trees, just a bit away from them, away from the rock. The thing grunts, as if it is speaking, turning, and facing the boulder.
Niklaus pushes Poem's head down immediately, with another yelp, as the creature looks away. It has no face, not that he can see, some sort of wicker funnel placed on top of its head and angled in a grotesque looking triangle, it smeared with blood. In the creature's hand is this massive broadsword, the blade on fire, currently sizzling. Whenever the creature takes a step, the ground trembles beneath them, he trembling likewise in place, latching onto Poem. Would… she wouldn't give up their position, would she?
The creature is bare-chested, which alludes to Niklaus the consideration of it being at least of human design, the skin a copper color, as if flames were burning alive underneath the thing's skin. A red sort of skirt – well, not a skirt, but Niklaus is grasping for straws, it is Poem who has all the fashion knowledge – is tied around the thing's waist, draping into the black sand.
The beast looks at one of the pine trees just next to Poem and Niklaus's hiding spot, he seeing it raise its hand – not the sword, just the hand – and the tree is turned into ash instantly. Poem screams into her palm again as the creature turns around and stomps off, the two watching it go. Wherever the creature leaves tracks, dark, gigantic footprints are left behind in the sand.
What… what have they found?
Poem and Niklaus lock eyes with one another, and without another word, are booking it straight in the opposite direction.
Vesuvia Vocanova: District 3 Female P.O.V (18)
The sky is not as bright as it had been yesterday, Vesuvia takes note of the fact, when she looks up through the blurred line of sight that is the mess of pine trees and brambles. There are more clouds out today, yet the temperature is not going down, but she is unsure if that is due to the fact that she and Jasper are in the section of the arena with geysers and the like. She wipes her brow with the back of her hand, listening for the trembles deep beneath the ground.
They've been coming and going a lot more frequently, though she is still not exactly sure what they are, despite one single shot late last night through the blurriness that is her rubbed eyes as the trembles cause Vesuvia to awake. She jolts upwards, startled, while Jasper is currently curled next to her, nestled against her chest, despite him being taller. She likes the company, and the fact that their awkward conversation two days ago has not led Jasper to flee. Vesuvia hates the thought of having to hunt down the man she is currently sleeping with… something about that statement sounds so… primitive.
However, due to primality, Vesuvia also knows the law of the jungle. The law of the jungle of performing, of showing what you are and where you came from. How you handle the taste of grit and dirt beneath your teeth, as your molars grind down into fangs bearing towards the enemy. She looks down at her hands, wringing them back and forth, imagining the piece of rope that she wraps around Dill Waylon's throat, watching the life in his eyes drain, seeing how his hands distort and claw at the air, when he is incapable of reaching for her own.
The snap had been quite satisfying, like when Vesuvia is lying there on that concrete pad she calls a bed, hearing the Peacekeeper batons go thwack in the night against whatever new unruly criminal needed to be straightened out. She never needed that visit in the night, she never needed those 'strong men' – "Men aren't strong," her uncle tells her once, when she is little, while he snuffs out a candle at the dinner table, "Men just like to think they're strong," – to come in and straighten her out. She did as she's told. She bowed her head towards those figures of authority and power. Vesuvia imagines what it'd be like to see their skin turned inside-out at the same time as saying thank-you for her steamed pile of broccoli, but she defers all the same.
So, how come she does not feel the reward surging through her fingers? Vesuvia looks up at the sky confusedly, while Jasper is undoing the rope that had been their alarm system, tied around those two pine trees stuck in the ground. It is not as if they had used their alarm system for anything good… not one animal, not one critter, or tribute, or even arena beast comes lurking by. She stays up late, even, knife in hand, tracing a cursive v in the sand, expecting something to leap out of the shadows yet… nothing. Nothing shows up, and all she has to show for her efforts are a single dead boy from Eleven, a district partner who might be terrified of her even as she tastes a bead of sweat off of his shoulder blade, and a knife with no blood on it.
It is Jasper, just last night, while they're around their dwindling fire, hoping to pass it off as a flickering flame dissipating into the night, coming up from the ground, who asks.
"Why Dill?" his voice is steady, but not judgmental. Vesuvia looks up from the fire, sitting across from him, holding her hands out, sides trembling from the breeze. She locks eyes with him, but he does not flinch. He doesn't do that anymore, not since their first meeting.
She brushes a lock of hair behind her ears, the same tint as the fire – "At least her hair isn't the color of blood," a relative once says, "For how much she wants to spill it," – but only rights herself up more, puffing up her chest. Intimidation tactics, even if Jasper Overheart has nothing to fear from her.
"Not yet, at least," Vesuvia smirks to herself, in her head, and then aloud, "What do you mean, Jasper? Why Dill what?"
"Why was he who you targeted at the cornucopia?" her district partner asks, he reaching out and tending to the fire with a stick, it crackling and sending embers in the air. Vesuvia tears her gaze away from him to follow them, watching it spiral high into the sky. That ember will be her soul, she imagines. Torn away from her body, from the fire. It won't want to stick around, not with what she plans to do. She notices that even as close as she is sitting to the fire, Jasper is sitting much farther away. He frowns, furrowing his brow. "I have been trying to figure it out all day, but I… I can't wrap my head around it, Vess."
Is she proud of her answer? Not necessarily, but she says it anyways, for it is the only thing that comes to mind, as she clears her throat. "Because he was right there."
That is that however, and it seems to her that Jasper scoots farther away from the fire, distancing himself from her. All in due time, she supposes.
Vesuvia is interrupted from the memory with a loud pinging noise that comes just above her head. She swivels around on a heel, hand already drawing the blade out of the belt, directing it upwards. Her hand does not shake, it stays steady… One-Eyed Hutchinson taught her that, with his eye-patch and the fork he uses to carve into the pork. She imagines it to be the man who arrested her, that it is his face she will slice up. Not that she hasn't tried already, but if she were successful, Vesuvia knows that there'd be a man of sturdy character in her cell the following evening.
She nudges Jasper with the sole of her shoe as he gets through the last bit of rope, standing up immediately as she then kicks him. "Get up. There's… something is in the air…" Vesuvia hisses, all the air on her arms standing up on end. The sound of the giant she sees in her sleep is different from this noise, for when that creature is near, the air sizzles and pops, crackling from his flaming sword, and the roaring. All of that is absent here, as Vesuvia searches the sky, hearing the pinging come closer and closer.
Something lands behind them, just out of her peripherals, Vesuvia twirling back round again, clenching tighter onto the blade. Jasper turns likewise, tilting his head. It is a casing of some kind, silver in color, with a parachute attached to the other end, flimsy and not seeming all that durable. He has his sword in hand, the sword that gets Diana's arrows in his face, across his cheek, holding it out the same way he holds the stick the night before by the fire.
"What… what do you think it is?" he asks, reproachfully.
"Well, we're never going to find if we stand here chicken shit over it," Vesuvia says back, pushing Jasper closer to the threat. She does not handle surprises well… say what one will about close quarter fighting, getting dirty, but this is not her expertise. Not strange packages falling out of the sky.
Jasper snorts something unintelligible as he crouches down to one knee, taking the silver canister in his hand. He pops the lid off, the parachute coming free and disappearing into the sand, Vesuvia glancing back and forth at it and her district partner. He reaches deep inside, she leaning over his shoulder, blade still in hand as she gets closer. Jasper pulls out some sort of similarly colored tube, though it is more of a piece of iron bar. Wrapped around it is a piece of paper, Vesuvia grabbing both objects out of Jasper's hand.
"There's nothing else in it," he says, turning the object upside down.
Vesuvia appraises the piece in her hands, catching some of the words written on the paper. "It's from Cole," she says, with surprise, mirth lacing her words. Perhaps some good news, although it'd be her luck, the message will contain foreboding news of her demise. "Well, greetings, tributes from Three," she wrinkles her nose. "Cole writes weird," Vesuvia mutters, but Jasper is shooing her with a hand back towards the paper. "You get to experience first hand something called the Sponsor System."
"Sponsor System?" Jasper echoes, confusion on his face, curling his lips downwards.
She continues reading. "If a Capitol citizen, or even a district citizen if they can afford the extravagance, feels like rooting for you, they can send you gifts ranging from shelter, food, weapons, and other items. What I have sent you out of my own pocket is one of these gifts," her eyes narrow in on the next sentence. "Use it only when you experience conflict…" she murmurs.
"That is supposed to help us in conflict?" Jasper laughs, pointing at the piece of iron that must only be around half a foot long in length, clenched in Vesuvia's other hand.
"You will know when it is time," Vesuvia circles her thumb along the iron bar. "Beyond that, keep up the great work, I am rooting for you. Happy Hunger Games, and may the odds be ever in your favor…" she recoils from the message, frowning. "Happy Hunger Games and may the odds be ever in your favor…?" Vesuvia frowns.
Jasper shrugs. "Maybe he thought it was a catchy saying."
"It was bullshit," Vesuvia chuckles, crumbling up the piece of paper. "He couldn't have sent a turkey feast or something? And instead we get…" she weighs the object down in her hands. It is quite heavy, surprisingly, for its size. "This…" Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, necessarily, but that is what she is doing. That is what she will do till she is ordered to do something else. She has killed, she has put on a show, an interview that everyone will remember, a training score that should not be fitting the frame that has been constructed... and Vesuvia only receives an iron bar the size of a piece of taffy out of the sky for her efforts.
She'd rather be taken out back and shot like some of the prisoners when they cost District 3 too much money if this is how it is going to go for her efforts.
Jasper plucks the object out of her hands, pocketing it, wrenching his sword out of the scorched earth. Enough distractions, Vesuvia decides, going to help him with the last bits of rope for their 'alarm.'
However, as she stares at her district partner's muscled back, noticing the scar that ripples from shoulder to ribcage along his back, Vesuvia can only think of one thing, concerning the sponsor item now in Jasper's pocket.
What if the conflict comes from them? Would he use it… would- would he use it to kill her?
The fact that Vesuvia's answer in her own head is not that of reassurance, that he wouldn't hurt her, terrifies her.
Diana Kratovska: District 4 Female P.O.V (17)
He's showing off again. Or, well… whatever it is he thinks he's doing, which is currently succeeding in only getting Diana to roll her eyes incessantly at Mr. Showboat Magnus Winterthorn. Her ally is kneeling, one knee digging into the dirt, the other clenched, muscles tightening as he flexes, his shirt off, body bulking and rippling underneath the sheen layer of sweat on his skin. Diana rolls her eyes even further as Magnus shoots her a smile, gritting his teeth together and flexing harder. Boys. For the record, this does nothing to her. Add a set of breasts and a long curly ponytail, then perhaps.
"Why not Portia Beninblade then?" Orion chuckles at her over their last breakfast, when he comes down from having sex with that District 12 kid that Diana forgets the name of just for a second. "She certainly has what you're looking for."
"Oh, God," Diana nearly chokes on her glass of orange juice, some of it sloshing onto the table, earning a glare from Wyvern through his spectacles. "Anyone but her."
"Kai'sa?" he offers gently, and Diana realizes now that she is going to shoot him at the cornucopia. Send an arrow straight into his heart, as if any of these other girls here were going to light a candle under her heart.
"Too crazy."
Diana yawns, physically in the arena, eyes gazing over the bow currently clenched in Magnus's fist as he flexes, holding it so the drawstring curls into the dirt instead of slicing off of his nose. He… he does have quite a large nose. That is her weapon, hers, not his, but he's holding onto it, and he 'claims' to be a better shot than her, if his training score had been any means. Diana knows that isn't the case. She doesn't have any proof, but she knows.
"I will have you know that all of this is just making you look even more silly," she tells him.
Magnus feigns an expression of mock hurt. "You're telling me that you've never seen this much man before?"
Diana pauses on the question, chewing on her lip. Well, there had been that stunning fellow she sees get beheaded via guillotine on stage in the District 4 square. Some guy named Alistair, who she had seen at school for a while before his execution, hanging around with rich pricks, so many rich pricks. "Your so-called friends are completely rich pricks," that inner voice in her head whispers to her, causing Diana to shudder away from Magnus once again curling his bicep.
Speaking of the actual rich asshole, he is sleeping, Diana passing her glance back towards their cottage in the fishing village, Catalus getting his few hours of afternoon sleep before it is Magnus's turn to go. Something tells her, however, that he will not be lying down to sleep, even as all three of them race to the window after watching Pierce Alversway fall out of the tower to his death. She isn't sure what kills him first, the fall or the arrow to the heart, but Diana has not taken her eyes off of Magnus ever since then, just to gauge his reaction.
She's also not sure if that fact that he is looking relatively stone cold and has since exiting the tower should bother her, for there's nothing there. Not a flicker, a quiver of his lip… nothing. Diana can feel the same hum in her fingers when she had been clenching the bow as she watches the arrow sink into Cecelia's pink and soft flesh, coating Catalus in copper. She feels the way it made her feel alive, and she will admit that to someone who won't look at her like she's insane, someday. Not now, but eventually, there'll be someone she can talk to. She might lie down on one of those couches that faces the ceiling that is always painted a sort of soft and serene white, the couch must be red… Diana can picture it, a man looking just like Wyvern that she'll pour her heart out to.
How she will say, "I hear her voice shrieking in pain every night," Diana tells her therapist. "I hear her screams, I see the way the blood just got on his face and-" It is bullshit, as Cecelia does not make a single sound as her life ends, there is no registry of what occurs, and Diana moves on to see if she finish what she started in slicing Jasper Overheart's cheek open. Did she want to kill Cecelia? No, even Diana knows that, deep down, regardless of the thought people will believe her, as she sees how Catalus looks at her. She will never get that judgement to shake off, no matter how hard she scratches and digs her nails in.
Diana will claw, and claw, and claw until she is Kai'sa Shadow, screaming her head off and up at the sky.
Magnus gets to his feet, slinging an arrow out of the quiver strapped to his back, locking it with the bowstring. Diana steps back, lifting her head up, placing a hand on her pale throat. Has he ever thought about what it'd be like to sink his own hands around her throat? To dig the nails in, to see her suffer and scream… Diana needs sleep, if these are the thoughts coming to her shortly before noon.
She observes his form, the tight way his body rigids in place, how shallow his breathing is, watching how his stomach doesn't even seem to rise, the air coming out of his nose. It is magnificent, but it is still flawed. "Who taught you how to shoot?" she asks, and before Magnus opens his mouth, she cuts him off with a slice of her hand in the air, whistling like an arrow. "And do not say that self-taught bullshit, cause I am not self-taught either; my father trained me before all of this craziness."
Magnus's look sends a shiver down her spine, for the way his jaw seems to lock into place, but if it bothers him, he doesn't show it. He simply lines down his sight, releasing the arrow. It flies into the tree he aims for just below the center, a curse slipping through his lips. Not perfect, his knees had been too tight, and he'd faint and- "Barracks," he says, interrupting Diana's critique in her head. "Also, indecisiveness," Magnus looks at her.
Diana frowns, tilting her head, resting against the tree. Her spear is stuck in the ground, but it is close, ever so close. She has yet to see anyone dangerous nearby, there being a run in that does not end in bloodshed with that boy Gemini Lennox, it being Catalus who finds him while going to take a leak. The boy from One races back to the camp to find his spear, talking about electrified whips and… there is a ruinous path of destruction, but besides that, no one else.
"He sees one tribute, and then he pisses himself out of fear into a coma," Diana murmurs in disappointment, as she sharpens her spear point against a rock. While Magnus doesn't say anything aloud, he still nods his head in affirmation.
"What do you mean?" she asks, swinging the spear round, practicing a jab towards the open air.
Magnus shrugs, wiping at his forehead with his shirt hanging off one of the branches. The arena is oddly silent right now, with dark clouds rolling in, but they don't look like rain clouds to Diana. Living by the ocean her entire life has had its perks, she supposes, seeing what that ominous presence usually means. "Well, I did a lot of sports growing up. Soccer, football, archery," he lists, pointedly, and then another shrug. "When I say it like that, makes you realize how good we used to have it before Nathaniel Coin decided to…" the words fall from his lips, as Diana bows her head. She knows, she would've been there to do it herself had she the chance. "Anyways, I dabbled in it, but with like most of my sports, I didn't stick with it."
"Yet, the barracks," Diana leans forward, off of the tree. "I didn't figure an army would use bow and arrows."
"Well, we did, but-" Magnus starts to speak, but he cuts himself off rather jaggedly, like a distorted tape, for the way his face scrunches up is entirely not natural. "Regardless, I got a lot of practice back in, and eighteen-year-old me is different from fourteen-year-old me, so I have a lot more effort to gain from it…" he scratches the back of his head.
Diana nods her head, fingers snatching at the sleeve of her uniform, tugging it downwards to one of the scars she earns while sharpening her spear last night, missing rather unceremoniously and getting the decent slice. Magnus stands up in alarm, thinking it is someone from outside the house, but it is Catalus who calms him down and gets the medical kit for them to use.
Eventually, regardless of his military training, Diana knows that she will beat Magnus eventually, in a shoot-out between them. She just needs to find that other bow, to get her hands on that weapon that someone stole from her, as she is certain there were two at the cornucopia and now just the one in Magnus's possession.
She wonders if Magnus ever expected the targets he fires at when he's fourteen to ever fire back at him. Diana wonders if he imagines what it is going to be like when an arrow slices through his neck.
One day, he'll get to taste it, get to feel it. She'll let him flex for now, she'll let him showboat all he wants. Those muscles will run red with more than just sweat soon; all she must do is wait. Like the tide, she must wait.
And eventually, the tide does come crashing into the shore.
Ramses Boskov: District 12 Male P.O.V (17)
The rain has started. At first, when Ramses hears it, he thinks it is the ants he gets in his dreams, the insectoids that are crawling along the inner space of his eyelids and across his corneas, but once he hears the pitter-pat noise the drops make when they hit the metal shingles on the sides of their hut, his body untenses. Orion hums a warm noise against his back, kissing down the shoulder blades, reminding him that he's loved, where there might be a broken noise rising out of Ramses's throat. Safe and sound, safe and sound when he is here, as Orion can be found in the stars, named after the constellation, a warrior through and through.
Ramses knows where his namesake comes from, a pharaoh who tortured people and an entire generation brought to suffer under his hand, from some old musty book that he's never laid eyes on… it is said that the leader, of a wondrous land called Egypt – the very name sends shivers down Ramses's spine – had his head up his own ass and brought illness to his kingdom. Why- why would that be the name his parents give him?
And his sister… he's heard of that name too, when Anastasia isn't just that of a beautiful woman that he knows his darling little sibling will grow up to become – he is not as sure, currently, if Ramses Boskov will turn into a handsome, dashing fellow of old age, however – is just as entrenched in tragedy. A Romanov, though the last name holds nothing to him, for Ramses only knows a single Romanov, one of the Hob workers with a missing tooth and a few others that are chipped… he is not royalty. The family, this Anastasia family gunned down, she among them, or so the legend is told. This is their legacy, tragedy, sorrow, death.
A quivering sob leeches from his lips, Ramses hugging onto Orion's hand even harder, curling the bicep closer to his heart. It is a break, they're on a break, as his entire body aches, feeling the same sort of cold chill from when he falls in the pool wash over his body, digging deep into his calves and prying the flesh open, rising upwards towards his heart. His lover murmurs a soft word of empathy and tugs harder.
"C'mon, Ramses, we need to continue," Orion says, and his voice is soft, but all Ramses hears is static. Static noise, painful, overriding his senses, overriding the roar of blood he can feel tugging his earlobes downwards towards his sternum.
"I don't want to…" Ramses pleads, rolling onto his other side to stare right at Orion directly, but he is already up, cracking his back, twisting his muscles, and stretching. The weapons they're using – Orion's sword, and Ramses's two spears that he finds sticking in a wall in one of the fishing villages – are resting on one of the wooden eaves in the doorway. The target is currently ripped to shreds, with another to take its place. Strawmen.
Strawmen, like the plastic dummies back in the training center, even when there are several puncture wounds in the same place that Ramses pokes back inside the air-conditioned facility. That feels like years ago, as if it hasn't been four days since he is standing on the hard blue mat and swinging the club as hard as he can against one of the trainer's sides, begging, practically, screaming with his throat gone raw that the man needs to give up.
Give up. A tactic Ramses has never used before, in his own head. Giving up is what gets the man stuck in the pit, as the boy from Twelve looks at his fingers. Well, of what used to be there, on his left hand, the hollow spots where he can feel bone protrude, the bones that miss their counterparts, the other side of their knuckles. Orion kisses there a lot, and Ramses does not have the heart to tell him how much it hurts, how much the reminder of what is lost can no longer sit within him the way it does. If it is to hang out in his soul one moment longer, he may lose himself to it.
Giving up is what places him here, in this accursed arena, it is here where all of the world's past mistakes come to a boil. Had it not been for Nathanial Coin deciding to go into the Capitol and slice Cain Passionia's son's throat from ear to ear… would he be here? Would he be fighting for District 12, the first district to grovel at the feet of the Capitol once One and Two vanish into the curtain here? However, on the same token, he wouldn't have met the brilliant, shining star that is Orion.
He looks over at his lover, his ally, his best friend in the arena, who is bent over a whetstone, sharpening the sword against it, slashing downwards. It is a shrill sound, one that rises into the air and the eaves of the doorway. Ramses flinches when there are sparks that shoot off out of the doorway. The last thing either one of them need is to cause a fire. To cause any sort of disturbance… that is not going to be in their favor.
Orion turns back to face Ramses, holding out the sword. The morning hours bring spear work, where he slices forward towards the strawman and goes across the waist, slashing upwards towards the neck. Ramses recalls the feeling of the pieces of straw landing on his wrists, light as a feather, kissing him with the force of a ghost, causing him to shake off the fright. It is as if someone is pressing their fingers across the rivet bone of his wrist, begging to have their life spared, pleading, and then their lips are on his. Ramses tries wriggling away, smacking a hand out into the air, nearly knocking the sword out of Orion's hand.
His ally sits back on his feet, he having stepped a bit higher on his tip toes. "Ramses…" Orion whispers, softly again, his face full of concern. "Babe, look at me, please." The boy from Twelve locks eyes with Orion, who is back by his side again, holding out the sword sideways, for him grip the hilt. "You can do this. And besides, it's just a strawman, sweetheart," There is a solidified edge to his voice, however, that Ramses can feel, slicing the tension in the air. "When Diana and Catalus and Magnus come for our heads, I can't protect us both and fight them off; you need to be ready, and we've got somewhere to start."
Ramses looks down at the blade, at his reflection in the metal, it shining back at him, haunting him. It is not the face of a leader he sees, not a prophet coming to bring the doomed masses back into the light. It is cracked, a chipped mirror where someone has ground their heel into the pieces, snuffing out whatever semblance of strength used to reside in the shards. The blade trembles in his hand, Ramses lifting his head upwards.
He does not care about inciting violence, that is not his issue. It is not the issue of whether or not it is right. It is the issue of whether or not he can, and no matter how many positive words Orion suffuses into his sides, letting them rest against the nape of his neck like a thick whipped cream, sweet and tantalizing, he does not believe. He simply trembles.
Orion moves out of the way, allowing him to have room between the blade and the target. It mocks him, on the post, Ramses swallowing and feeling his heartbeat slam into his ribcage. He can only think about Kai'sa, who somehow scores higher than him, though he has no idea how, races for him at the cornucopia, her face twisted into a snarl, blades clenched in her hand, diving downwards towards the grass, threatening to carve him up. She nearly succeeds, the bit of agony that has bloomed along his calf reminiscent of that, until something had distracted her, though he isn't sure what draws his district partner off.
He doesn't hate her, not yet at least. Ramses knows that there is good in her, and every good leader tries and saves his flock. The nation he will build will not rest on the hands and knees of the exploited, of the deranged and the undesired, but those that take the hammer and the chisel and the ruler and aspire. He does not Kai'sa Shadow in that picture, or the blonde locks of hair that Diana Kratovska cherishes as much as she does. He does not see that in his idealized society… he doesn't even see Orion, who must be there, for he wouldn't abandon him… he knows he wouldn't.
Ramses looks back at Orion, who is at all unlike his district partner, where his coldness is warmth, where her viciousness is his tenderness against the small of his back, or the fingers that curve along his trembling jaw. Orion nods back. "You can do this, Ramses. It isn't even real, and it isn't swinging back at you."
Will Niklaus Peverell swing back at him when Ramses bears down fiery hell onto the District 8 tributes? While Orion hasn't specified any particular targets they'll go after, all he sees is the tributes from Eight, or maybe that little girl from Eleven... people that he is somehow expected to harm? Ramses's mind blanches at the thought, going to a clean slate as he hardens his grip on the blade in his grasp. He lifts the sword up, it a bit heavier than he anticipates, almost dropping the weapon from the hole in his left hand – damn it, why must he be a lefty? – but he eventually gets it high enough to propel momentum.
"I can do this…" he tells himself, still holding onto the weapon, which means he is past the point of no return. There has never been a spineless king, a king who couldn't lift his sword and honor the sacrifices made before him, and Ramses Boskov is not going to be the king who hides in the shadows. He will not be the king who believes he is invincible either, fighting on the front lines until the sun has sunk beneath the sky. But he will fight.
Ramses swings the blade down, slicing through the strawman's midsection, severing the post completely in two, part of it clattering over with a thud against the wood. The blade falls out of his grip almost immediately, his muscles still aching from the exertion in the morning, his body shaking like a leaf, the sword falling into the floor, sticking straight up like a pole.
Orion is cheering and congratulating him, there are more warm kisses pressed into his spine and down until his lover's lips are circled around his hips. Ramses reaches back and tugs on Orion's hair, hoisting him upwards so the cameras do not catch nefariousness, for his darling Anastasia is watching.
Even as they embrace, even as Ramses does feel a bit of pride swell in his chest, with a forced smile that threatens to crack the outer edges of the lips… he feels alone.
He has never felt this alone before in his entire life.
Kileigh Katsaras: District 5 Female P.O.V (17)
The rain has turned into a downpour, and it might be the only thing Kileigh Katsaras is pissed at seeing. It is a violent word, one that turns sharply over in her head, but it is the truth, as she peers out from under her tarp cover, feeling the thick rain hail down from the heavens onto her head. She cannot see a foot in front of her, the torrential downpour is that intense, and all Kileigh hears is the weather. Her shoes are wet, digging into the soft dirt, now mud, from how much water has been poured into it.
She turns around, back into her tarp, pulling out the bow and arrow set she had taken from the cornucopia, wiping back a few loose strands of brown hair over her ears, water logged and dripping fresh droplets onto her uniform, staining it in a blooming gray flower. It has been a lot of gray lately, as she lies on the ground, curled up with a thin blanket covering her like a sheet, as her body vibrates with chills, trying to keep warm.
Kileigh peers out from the tarp again, looking for any signs of brightness, any sign of familiar blue sky and fluffy white clouds, but it is that same dreariness that has soaked itself into her skin, restricting a hold around her throat. She cannot breathe, she cannot feel the pulse of being alive under her fingers as she runs them along her ribcage, desperate for any sign of action. There is nothing, as she pushes Zachary's corpse over, seeing the sword wound in his chest, the copper just leaking out of him, and how she knows Pierce Alversway must've done it. There's no other explanation.
It is why she grabs the bow, feeling the metal press into her hand, the comfort and security it brings, how that rings off the alarm bells in her head. This is foreign to her, this is not what she knows, yet it feels like, just as it did back in the training center, that she's been holding the bow her entire life. There is no Zachary this time to stop her, so she ran. She gets in Pierce's face because she can, tackling him to the ground, perhaps the only actual form of violence she has ever initiated in.
It is the look of terror on his face that makes her pause in mid scream, for how wide his dark eyes go while her spit slides down his cheek amid all the other chaos. He- he didn't do this… he didn't kill her district partner out of some petty feud. Porscha pushes her off then, Kileigh remembers that, and she also remembers fleeing. It is all she knows how to do, to fly when the fight gets too intense, for she'd never be jumping into the fray in the first place.
She's betrayed herself, Kileigh's stomach churning in nausea that threatens to appear out of her throat as vomit onto the decaying grass of the dead forest. Her parents have told her time and time again to live by her principals, and she has obeyed them. Every last word she has stuck to the inside lining of her organs, her lifeforce lives in those words. Violence is a disease, and Kileigh is not a disease. She is gorgeous.
The girl from Five does not feel gorgeous, lying here, curled up against the flimsy piece of plastic that is supposed to be shielding her from the rain. It has been at least twenty-four hours without food, her stomach screaming at her that she needs to eat. Her entire life she has not once raised a hand to kill something, even when they're out in the wild. Her parents set the traps, as they're living beyond the fence line, waiting to get told it is safe so they can return to civilization and the safety of Tupperware and beans in a can… they set the traps and simply wait for the animal itself to die of natural causes before cutting it up.
Kileigh does not have that luxury, as her stomach rumbles again, she muttering through the sound of pouring rain. "I am not going to die out here…" she tells herself, hauling up to her feet, hands clenched around the bow and the quiver slung around her back. Only a few arrows are missing, having fired a couple here or there to get a feel of the weapon, but not at an animal yet. The rule of pacificism applies to all things, in her mind, animals as well, given that mankind is an animal. Even the dumbest of the flock deserve their life.
"Remember who you are, Kileigh," her father tells her, back in the Justice Building, waiting for the Peacekeepers to drag her away, drag her away to the city of death and glamour, not necessarily in that order. Her mother is too distraught to stay, crying into a handkerchief she had knitted out in the wild of Five. She has no idea why they didn't stay out there, to go outwards and find what could've remained in the parts of Panem that the Capitol refused to talk about. Yet they came home… and here she is.
"A failure?" Kileigh recalls joking with him, because she always jokes with her father during the serious moments that pace alongside her heartbeats, for it is better than confronting the sad truths.
Her father slaps her across the face. Hard. Kileigh stumbles back into one of the bookcases pressed against the wall, anger flashing in the Katsaras patriarch's eyes, furious as she looks at her father in shock. He lowers his hand, but he is not looking at the limb as if it had acted on its own volition. He is looking at her, staring at her and demanding she stare back.
"Do not ever call yourself that. You are not a failure," her father hisses, and he is gone, without a hug or a kiss, and she rubs the red welt that appears on her cheek. In comparison, to Zachary's black eye he receives from one of the Peacekeepers on the train, she may have rather be slapped.
He broke their biggest rule, yet she is to remain true to herself. Not complicated or difficult to follow at all, she supposes.
Kileigh holds onto the bow for security, rather to be caught with a weapon than without, and if one of these tributes really wants to have their beef with her, it is a bridge she will cross when she gets there. There are plenty of other suiting targets out in the arena, where Kileigh races into what she knows. What she knows, so far, has led to lite starvation.
Breakfast yesterday is an already dead fledgling she finds twitching surreptitiously on the ground, one of its wings crushed underneath it, and a rabbit that is also found dead by her on top of a hill. The meat there had been warm in her hands, as she tries starting a fire rather unsuccessfully. If starvation itself does not kill her, then whatever had been in the wild rabbit will, she figures. There is also one of the golden apples she sees hanging from a few of the trees that look different from all the others in the forest. It is the only time she uses the bow so far in these three days of being stuck in the arena, and a few missed shots eventually get one to fall into her hand.
The way the sun falls on the apple in her hands as she looks at it… her heart yearns for the fence line. For something to go right in her life, for something to make sense… she'll go back there, one day, to the wilderness, to live her days out there in the greenery that Kileigh could call home.
Kileigh pauses in her journey, leaving the tent behind. She has lingered for too long in the same spot anyways, and if her stomach is to growl any louder, the tributes over on the obsidian beach are going to hear her at this point. Is… are there voices out there? The girl tilts her head, trying to concentrate, but all she hears instead is the torrential downpour, which in itself is starting to let up.
The arena must sense it as well, as Kileigh sees a rabbit dart out from one of the burrows in the ground. She gasps in fright, holding the bow to her chest as the little animal dashes through the greenery, jumping into a dead pile of leaves sitting at the base of one of the trees. There are a few other trees located here, not as sparsely populated like some barren spots she has seen in the forest lately.
Kileigh grits her teeth together, looking past two oddly shaped rocks burrowed into the ground, while the rabbit kicks around and munches on a leaf. It is now or never, that she has to take this shot. She doesn't want to starve to death, even as the ringing in her ears resonates from the slap.
"It's just a rabbit…" she tells herself, swallowing her fear. If she fires this bow, will the crevices of hell open up and drag her down into the fiery chasms below? If she fires an arrow at this other living, breathing creature, will the Holy Creator shun her out of heaven? Kileigh draws an arrow out of the bow, sleek, titanium built, it whistling through the air when it is released, and loads it into the bow. "It's a rabbit, versus my life," Kileigh coaches herself through it.
The bunny locks eyes with her, turns around, leaps in the air some, trying to book it off ahead towards those strange rocks. Kileigh swears something incoherent, a mix between a cuss word and a cry of desperation, releasing the bow. She closes her eyes, turning her head away, waiting for the thump. It never comes, she sheathed in darkness waiting, anticipating, but it never comes.
Kileigh opens her eyes, bracing for the potentially dead rabbit, her first ever kill, to be lying there, bleeding its guts and offal out onto the dead grass, but she is mistaken. Her arrow has found a target, however, in the tree that is near those two oddly shaped rocks. Kileigh takes a step forward to retrieve the arrow from the tree, as she can see the bunny racing, zipping away, a muttered groan coming from the rocks causing her to freeze.
Then the rocks move, and they're not rocks. They're people.
Kileigh locks eyes with the vicious glare of Porscha Watanabe, as her ally, Kai'sa Shadow, locks eyes with the arrow sticking out of the tree just a few inches away from Kai'sa's face.
Her knuckles grip harder onto the bow.
"Oh fuck me…" Kileigh gasps, a rasped pain in her chest.
Such is the sin of violence, to cause violence is the punishment of death.
Porscha Watanabe: District 6 Female P.O.V (16)
It has been a day, and all Porscha knows how to do is bowl over with laughter, clutching her stomach tight with a hand while cackles rise out of her throat and vanish into the open air. Kai'sa is making similar sounds next to her, resting against a pine tree, hair tied back into a ponytail while Porscha keeps the non-shaved part of her head free and in her face. She sits up on her elbows, smiling at her ally the best she can through the rain. Neither of them are sitting under shelter, preferring to hang out in the elements while the water runs atop her and down her arms.
It is a shower, a nature shower, one that she is not all that unfamiliar with once she'd hang up the ballet slippers and step out into the cool, crisp autumn air of District 6, waiting for her father. He'd be on his cellphone, barking in a language she didn't understand, one Datsun Watanabe has never taught his daughter because she'd never need it. Japanese, she believes it to be, when running a voice clip she captures through a translator, and the language is foreign to her even as she looks at her facial structure in the mirror.
Porscha only has that to go by in terms of looks and her heritage, for her father holds nothing, keeps nothing, there's nothing in the past for her to look for. Her mother is gone, wisps of cloud, because she killed her, killed her out of the womb, and Datsun did not keep photos. They might be back in the house with the sienna door, but that is all the way across the district, back in the 'undesirable neighborhood.'
"It's an undesirable neighborhood, Datsun, because half of Six wants to kill you, and the other half wants to kill me to get to you," she tells her father at dinner, clutching some gauze that she is wrapping across a blister on her big toe on her left foot that is threatening to pop. Her tea is splashed in her face, hot and burning, but Porscha doesn't scream, for she knows she is telling the truth. Being the daughter of a man who managed to rain firebombs down on the poor and downtrodden does not make her likely to win Most Popular in her school.
Except, since she is homeschooled, Porscha guesses she'd win that contest hands down, practically lying down without lifting a finger. She always trained alone, with her ballet instructors that demanded her hips be 'this many inches' short – they'd always make a fake measurement with their hands, as if Porscha is supposed to deign whatever number that is from guessing in the air – and that if she were to pop a blister, she'd use a hot sewing needle, and let the blood that cakes her ankle suffuse her dancing soul with passion and agony. She can only imagine now why she would be the only student to take dancing lessons with these whack jobs.
Porscha places a finger to her lips, shushing Kai'sa sillily while she rummages through her backpack for lunch, moving under one of the golden apple trees for a bit of coverage. Their wandering past the tower, which she can no longer see in the thaw of the rain falling down onto the ground, has led them into the dead forest, the last place they had stepped into before their journey down the far-right side of the arena to find the sword in the stone. They camp here for the night, as she supposes there is really nowhere else to go, nomads hopping from biome to biome, but only for one purpose.
She is going to find Kileigh Katsaras and crack her skull open like an egg, Porscha glancing at her mace that is resting out of the backpack, spiked and all, glistening wet as more of the sky falls upon it. Kai'sa has her knives sheathed in a bandolier, that wrapped up in her own backpack, but Porscha is acutely aware of the movement she sees beyond the bit of what she can see. There isn't much, as the rain is starting to let up, but it has always been one of her gifts, the sense of presence.
Porscha lies back down, looking over at Kai'sa, who is completely soaking wet, staying out in the rain as the girl from Six reaches for a cracker, the sleeve open and resting in one of the straps so they don't fall into the dirt.
"Dizziest you've ever gotten after finishing a turn sequence?" she asks her, this round of questions centered around dance related questions. The worst one so far has been injury related, Kai'sa talking about how she twists her ankle through a leap, colliding with the mirror, and her dance coach Valentina needing to scrape off dead flesh and blood cells from the mirror, a ghastly scene, but it only makes Kai'sa smile more.
"You're insane," Porscha giggles into her palms, while chomping down on a nut that is nestled in the ground. It could kill her, but truthfully, if the ballet program her father pushes her through hasn't killed her yet, then these nuts from the ground certainly won't.
"I'm insane and you love it," Kai'sa giggles back, shoving Porscha over some as she nearly tips back and onto the ground. "But… dizziest I've ever gotten after a turn sequence?" the girl rubs her chin, getting to her feet, dusting some muck off of her knees and sides. The rain has slowed down to a gentle trickle against the trees, the skies already starting to clear, though it has rained for a few hours now on and off, the heaviest part surely passing. Porscha appraises over Kai'sa's lithe body, her muscles popping, she raising her eyebrows appreciatively. "It had been a few coupe turns followed by some pirouettes, but then it had been partner work with my coach, Valentina… and on and on I spun until I went right out of the door into the trash can!"
To demonstrate, Kai'sa spins round and round a few times, ponytail swishing in the breeze until she slips on her own backpack, plummeting to the ground in obscene laughter. Porscha falls back, laughing again, this time carefree and raucously, and loud. She closes her eyes, about to cry some, when Kai'sa sits up on her heels.
There is the sound of something darting across the landscape, Porscha picking it up even while she giggles, and then something a lot sharper going whish. A loud thunk causes her to open her eyes in shock, as that did not sound like Kai'sa falling over. Her ally is looking at her wide-eyed, for Porscha sees it shortly after Kai'sa wrenches it out of the pine tree right by her face, just a few inches away from her in fact.
An arrow lies in Kai'sa's hand, Porscha's heartbeat clamoring in her chest at the fact that someone just almost killed her, her following line of sight bringing her to…
"That bitch!" Porscha screams at the top of her lungs, leaping to her feet, pulling her mace out of her backpack without a moment's hesitation. "First you kill my district partner for petty revenge, and now my girlfriend? You're fucked, Katsaras!" she yells, shoes connecting to the ground.
Kai'sa squawks a note of protest. "Girlfriend?" there is confusion fraught in her tone, but Porscha doesn't have time for word choice now when she sees Kileigh Katsaras up ahead, armed with a bow and arrow, turn on her heel and run in the opposite direction.
So much for not being violent, she supposes, as Porscha senses Kai'sa leap to her feet likewise and help give chase, knives by her side. Porscha breathes in through her mouth and out through her nose, reaching outwards, closer, closer, closer… and aha! Her fingers snag onto the back of Kileigh's shirt, tugging the girl downwards with all of her might.
It has perhaps the opposite effect, for Kileigh does fall, but falls forward instead, striking her head on a rock as she collapses into the dirt. Kai'sa catches up to Porscha, the girl from Six holding onto Kileigh close to her, close enough so the girl, clearly frightened, can see the hate in her eyes. She hates her, loathes her, wants to burn her alive in the hottest pit she can find. Launching her onto one of the water geysers would be painful enough, she supposes, but no, it needs to be done by her hand.
A hypocrite, a woman who has sworn off violence, yet all she shows is how to be reckless, how to cause harm. Porscha is no hypocrite, she'll hurt whoever decides to get in her way, without mercy, without reason. The man in the market, the hotshot with his acned face and his bad breath… he must've thought he's a hero for confronting a girl who is all alone. Porscha takes pleasure in seeing his lifeforce spill onto the concrete, for he's a hypocrite.
"You!" Porscha screams in the girl's face, spit flying everywhere, burning through the rage rippling in the dancer's throat.
Kai'sa is nearby, breathing heavily, hands on her knees while she pauses, Kileigh trembling and trapped underneath. "Please… please don't-"
"Did Pierce beg for his life before you murdered him?" Porscha screams again, shaking the girl from Five wildly. "Did you let him spill his guts out to you over a kill he didn't do before you cut his eyes out of his head and shot him through the heart?" Confusion and near virile disgust flashes across Kileigh's face, but Porscha knows an actress when she sees one.
She has played the role for years, the perfect little daughter who does not question where she is sat at the dinner table no matter how many times it hurts when she's struck with the switch. No matter how hard her teachers pushed her because she is a Watanabe from that house with the sienna door, she pushes through, pushes on.
"I-" Kileigh babbles over her own words. Pathetic, unable to even defend her own actions. "I don't know what you're talking about…" it comes out very quickly, but the next statement is even faster still. "Pleasedon'tkillmeIdidn'tmeantoaimforyouIwasaimingforasquirrel…"
Porscha gets off of Kileigh, leaving her crumbled, deflated, as she looks over at Kai'sa. Let her go? Let a girl who brutalized her district partner the way she did to run free? How can she trust her to not go and find that little Cassiopeia Grey and cut her own eyes out from her head, or carve sweet Niklaus Peverell to pieces?
Kileigh struggles to her hands, breathing heavily, rasping for air, broken, but Porscha knows true brokenness.
She doesn't even remember lifting the club in her hands, but she remembers the reverb that travels up her arm as she smashes the weapon into her skull. The first blow deafens Kileigh, causing her to fall into the mud, but she isn't dead yet, not yet. Porscha sees her chest still rising, which means the neurons are working, as she slams the club down again. And again, and again, and again, and again.
It is the sixth whack that causes the club to be covered in crimson, on the sixth strike that Kai'sa is tugging back at her ally and pulling her away from the corpse, but Porscha wants to leap forward and strike some more. It is the pain of seeing Pierce die, of seeing Kileigh lie, of her father throwing tea in her face, of seeing the beautiful Panem sky riddled with sulfur burn up from her father's firebombs, and at the fact that she has no idea what her fucking mother looks like.
Porscha slings her bloodied club away in a fit of disgust, looking at the mess, virtually unrecognizable, but she knows it is Kileigh. Dead, for certain. The girl from Six sinks to her knees and unleashes a scream towards the sky.
Sixteen painful years, and this isn't even the first life she's taken.
All she can feel through the simmering rage is the fact that Kai'sa is latching onto her in a hug, even when the rain comes and starts to wash off the blood. It will not wash off the stench of death off of her skin, it will not wash away Porscha Watanabe's sins.
Emrick Israel: President of Panem P.O.V
The cameras, a vast majority of them at the very least, about forty of the current sixty displaying feeds in the arena, are on the girl from Six, with her bloodied mace in her hands, droplets falling into the dead grass under their feet, and the corpse of the girl from Five beneath her. Dead, dead, dead, and Emrick Israel feels a burst of pride rise in his chest. He always knew that Porscha Watanabe, like her father, had the capacity to be a monster, to play right into people's hands and card decks of what is expected of them.
Emrick looks over at Cain, who is practically bubbling and bouncing with excitement on the balls of his feet, energy and happiness spreading from ear to ear with the smile stretching his face wide. It is what he wants, what he has wanted to see ever since Cassiopeia Grey plunges the knife into Pierce Alversway's eye. This is what everyone will be talking about, not how Magnus Winterthorn does a mercy kill, but how Porscha Watanabe is an evil little girl who kills out of a miscommunication… out of a mistake, and that pride blossoms from the center of Emrick's chest and down to his ankles.
"This is what you wanted, no?" he asks Cain, who has slowed his energy down to a more brisk walk back to the glowing command hub in the center of the Gamemaker Center. Everyone is at work on their own stations, Nyria locking eyes with the president from across the room at her own station, fingers clattering away on the keyboard in front of her, given that now Surt, the Norse god of Fire has been revealed in his section, and Valravn swooping in and out of his section as well… she's busy. Everyone is busy, even Emrick, with the fan mail and the phone calls, and most importantly, the show itself. "To see someone become a villain. Bloodshed…"
"Yes," but even as his vice president says that, there is a frown on his face, a small look of disappointment. "But it is not happening fast enough," Cain's fingers are priming against the hologram, locking the 'trigger' for the cannon noise that'll echo around the arena, heaviest and loudest at the dead body that Kai'sa, on screen, is trying to pull her district partner away from. "I wish we were already in the final six…"
Emrick rolls his eyes. Aspirations, aspirations, aspirations… that is great for Cain, he knows, that his vice president wants more and will never be satisfied with the more he has, but at a point, to a certain degree, it is now getting annoying. The moment his vice president's ambition and aspiration for more towers over what Emrick is feeling is the moment he calls Lydia into his office to tighten the Peacekeeper rotations. Speaking of the Head Peacekeeper, as Emrick searches around the Gamemaker Center, the cannon in the arena for Kileigh Katsaras's demise sounding off, tributes looking around wildly, she is nowhere to be seen. He has not heard much of her besides one status report over the mansion's intercom early in the morning, but perhaps it is nothing to be worried about. She always comes back, like the good attack dog she has been trained and bred to be.
"Let these things run their course," Emrick sighs, patting a hand on Cain's shoulder. The vice president flinches at the contact, which only makes the president tighten the grip even harder until the two men are locking eyes. He will never forget how he got told he has no spine, how he might be the weaker of the two men sitting in the chair, to make him the most powerful person in the world…. Emrick will tighten his grip however hard he wants, until there is the breaking of bone. "If the Games take about two weeks for the tributes to all flush themselves out naturally, then they will," he smirks, crossing his arms. "Clearly your announcement during the bloodbath had been successful, because we're getting the results we wanted."
"If you say so…" Cain grumbles, moving onto another station.
Emrick turns around and rests the small of his back on the cool metal of the arena hologram, the cameras slowly starting to change back to the other assorted groups of tributes who have collected their bearings. He looks intensely at Jasper Overheart and Vesuvia Vocanova of District 3, the two tributes sitting around what looks like another campfire, pouring interest over the object clenched in the girl's hand.
"I am glad that the escorts are taking advantage of the sponsor system," he nods his head in regard towards the District 3 pair, Cain turning around briefly to look with him. "Even though it is just the escorts…" Emrick mumbles, frowning. Somehow, despite all the success, all the ratings, all the applause and love he has been given by the Capitol populace for doing something so monumental and grandiose… they aren't playing along, not like he expected.
"Give them time," Cain says, waving a hand back and forth dismissively.
"Well, in a matter of tonight, either you or Nyria need to create some sort of announcement for Capitol citizens to sponsor. We can't, as per the rules of favoritism," Emrick puts the clause in himself, and knows that Lydia will stick it to him if he were to break it. He has favorites, sure, seeing how Diana Kratovska fires arrows like she fires words, or the merciless way Portia Beninblade slices Calen Kinegrove's throat open, or how Gemini Lennox is walking around Valravn's forest of illusion cackling his head off… but he cannot support them any more than the poor in the Districts will be incapable of doing. Nothing, nothing at all. "After all, this is their tax dollars going into here."
Cain smirks, nodding his head, though he does not vocalize his acknowledgment of the command. It'll get done, Emrick is sure, but at the pace he wants it… it'll be passed onto Nyria, since Cain will say that he and Bella need to go try and create yet another child… the president shudders, running a hand through his hair, as he bids goodbye to a few members of the Gamemaker staff, heading back to the presidential mansion.
The entire Capitol is divided into sectors, the mansion, and the newly built Center, as well as the tribute one in Sector A, the most wealthy enterprises and housing and the very foundation of Panem constructed into this part of the city. It is only a few minutes' walk out the sliding glass doors of the Gamemaker Center to make it to the front entrance of the presidential mansion, the Peacekeepers flanking him – "Not Lydia," Emrick corrects himself, "None of them have my back like Lydia," – opening the door when they get there.
Up the stairs they go, Emrick shrugging off his suit-jacket, and undoing his tie. It is the time of day when he gets to relax, to kick his legs back in the chair – he knows Cain covets it, holds his entire being and thought into getting this chair into his possession, but Emrick would rather be beheaded like Nathanial Coin than let his vice president assume the role, for he is all but a child in men's clothing – and watch the Games from the monitor installed on the side wall.
He closes the door to his office, the Peacekeepers making their posts right by the entrance, guns trained, as the sun sinks beneath the sky. Emrick takes a deep breath, the pressure of the day sinking down into his ankles while he draws the curtains closed, looking at the new pile of fan mail that has come from the Capitol citizens who love him so, and even a few heretics – he'll consider them heretics, a fancy word for fancy folk – in the districts who worship him…
Emrick likes to read and answer the fan mail sent to him. Cain gets some as well, talking about his looks and the way people are sorry for what happened to his family – Emrick is not, he rejoices tears of sunshine and iodine at the news – but he has a secretary to answer those. Emrick does not, as he undoes the cufflinks on his suit, setting them aside. He goes to grab the first envelope on the stack when he frowns, turning his nose up. What… what's that smell?
He looks at the corners of the envelope, noticing that it feels heavier in his hand than the usual kind of mail. The smell picks up stronger as he holds the piece of mail closer to him, scooting forward in his chair. One of the ends, the end he is holding with his bare hands, is soaking wet. Soaking wet in some sort of black liquid on his desk.
Emrick drops it in a surprise, shock rippling through his system. No one else has access to this office unless it is Lydia, on matters of national security, and he- he hasn't handed the key to her in weeks. Who… who… Emrick realizes that this puddle of dark liquid is all over the desk, soaking underneath the lamp that he turns on, droplets and dark streams rippling across the rest of the fan mail spread out.
He steps to his feet in alarm, calling out for the Peacekeepers, who bust in on command, sights trained to shoot the curtains to shreds, to destroy the ghosts that terrorize their leaders…
Emrick looks down at the message written in the dark liquid, crudely done, as if done by metallic fingers, for there are notches in the wood.
You will be replaced, Mr. President. And when you go, no one will mourn the old being rinsed by the new. Tick-tock, Mr. President.
He lifts his head up, heart hammering in his chest.
Very well. Someone wants to spook him. Prank him. Play in a game they know nothing about.
Emrick Israel has made many mistakes in life, but assuming the Panemian presidency is not one. He plays, and he wins.
19th: Kileigh Katsaras, 17, District 5 Female. Killed by Porscha Watanabe of District 6 via blunt trauma to the head with a mace. Submitted by LiveFreeOrDie. Oh, Kileigh, Kileigh, Kileigh... what an interesting character you were. I have never actually had a pacifist before in either of my previous tribute casts, and I felt that since this was the 1st Games, a pacifist here could be more engaging than say if this was a 74th year story. I had some plans occasionally to take you further, but I usually end up sometimes sacrificing certain tributes for other tribute storylines, and plus, Free, I did get Amaris from you after all. Well, Vesuvia needs to find someone else to verbally spar with now.
Tribute List (Boy - Girl)
District 1: Catalus Drachma [Submitted by Manny Siliezar]
District 2: Magnus Winterthorn [Submitted by Audmirable] / Portia Beninblade [Submitted by WhateverIsOpen]
District 3: Jasper Overheart [Submitted by ParanoidSylph] / Vesuvia Vocanova [Submitted by Platrium]
District 4: Orion Maythorpe [Submitted by jimster920] / Diana Kratovska [Submitted by Firedawn'd]
District 6: Porscha Watanabe [Submitted by thornehub]
District 7: Sylvan Adello [Submitted by In Writing] / Nevaeh Davoli [Submitted by dyloccupy]
District 8: Niklaus Peverell [Submitted by timesphobic] / Poem Cavalli [Submitted by LordShiro]
District 9: Gemini Lennox [Submitted by Apple1230] / Camilla Rodriguez [Submitted by Reign of Winter]
District 10: Nokomis Yanaba [Submitted by Ripple237]
District 11: Cassiopeia Grey [Submitted by ZeroIsANumber]
District 12: Ramses Boskov [Submitted by Guesttwelve] / Kai'sa Shadow [Submitted by SetFiresJust2WatchThemBurn]
...
ALLIANCE LIST
The Mini Careers: Catalus Drachma (D1M), Magnus Winterthorn (D2M), Diana Kratovska (D4F)
Girl Power: Portia Beninblade (D2F), Camilla Rodriguez (D9F), Nokomis Yanaba (D10F)
Brutal Technology: Jasper Overheart (D3M), Vesuvia Vocanova (D3F)
Respect for the Principal: Orion Maythorpe (D4M), Ramses Boskov (D12M)
The Dancing Queens: Porscha Watanabe (D6F), Kai'sa Shadow (D12F)
Woodland Family: Sylvan Adello (D7M), Nevaeh Davoli (D7F)
Wax Poetica: Niklaus Peverell (D8M), Poem Cavalli (D8F)
Loners: Gemini Lennox (D9M), Cassiopeia Grey (D11F)
...
Kill Leaderboard:
Magnus Winterthorn (D2M): I
Portia Beninblade (D2F): I
Vesuvia Vocanova (D3F): I
Diana Kratovska (D4F): I
Porscha Watanabe (D6F): I
Nokomis Yanaba (D9F): I
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is a wrap for this chapter of Liberty, Chapter #24: Mistakes of the Many, and perhaps there have been mistakes made. Niklaus and Poem have seen the next "God" to be awoken and from Norse mythology it is Surt, a Fire Giant, and alongside Valravn and one more deity, if you've been reading carefully, needs to come into play. Vesuvia and Jasper have been awarded an item from the sky. Diana and Magnus shared war stories. Ramses is pushing himself to the point of breaking, Kileigh fired and unlike Magnus missed... and Porscha has gotten her wrongful vengeance. A lot, also with our Capitol continuation, for our longest arena chapter yet, and I can assure you, they will not be as long as this one has turned out to be.
Once again, submissions for my collab with the wonderful thorne98 are still open, and we have another prologue coming out shortly that I can't wait for you guys to read. The form and rules are on my profile and his if you're interested; we need the subs, a lot of slots with still a 0 next to them. Beyond that, I will have the next update, Chapter #25: Victories of the Few coming out sometime next week, hopefully before Friday as my 2020Fall Semester is over, which means I am on winter break for a good bit and that means more writing time. Besides that, your support is greatly appreciated. I love you all so much! Have a great day! Bye!
~ Paradigm