The Hotel: Bloater

A/N: Part 2 of 3 of The Hotel. I didn't proofread again lmao, whoops. Enjoy!

~Well, here comes a comeback

The kid is back, is back on track

And there goes my hero

He's an underdog, he's coming out on top~

Lana Birkhead

"I'll never take nice smelling things for granted again," Talon said with a cheerful smile that barely blocked the look of disdain on his features as we passed by the pile of burned corpses. They were all thrown into a pile and set ablaze purposefully, and it looked like they had been there for a while.

"What kind of things?" She asked him curiously. She tried to keep up with his pace, but every step sent a new wave of pain to her stomach. It was better than it was the day before, but walking still felt more like staggering. Talon told her it would only be getting worse before it got better. It was hard to imagine it hurting much more than it already did. They had trained her to handle pain. She was used to fighting on even while she was hurting. But it was starting to get hard.

"Oh, you know, the basics. Anything that isn't a rotting corpse, really. Might just visit a field of flowers first thing when I get back to District Two." He paused, then laughed to himself, shaking his head. "Never thought I'd be saying that."

"Where did you think you'd be wanting to go?" Lana asked. She tried to focus on the words that came from him, the pictures they painted of a place she didn't know. It distracted her from the feeling that she was about to drop to her knees and not be able to get back up.

"Home, I guess," he said, shrugging. "I'll still be headed there first, 'course. Think Irelia would kill me if I didn't," he joked.

That answer only added more questions that Lana couldn't understand, and so she focused on the simplest one to put into words. "Irelia?"

"My sister," he explained. "We can take a rest if you need it, by the way. We still have plenty of time to make it to the feast."

"I'm fine," she lied, wincing as she stepped over a knocked over electrical pole. "What's it like?"

"What's what like?"

"Having a sister," she said. She looked over at him with inquisitive eyes.

"That's. . . hard to explain," he said after a while. "Depends on the sister, too." She continued to stare at him, and after a while he seemed to realize that wouldn't be enough, and hesitantly continued on. "It can kind of be like having a friend. It's someone that you can trust, someone you care about."

Lana thought about that for a moment, then nodded her head. "I think I understand," she said.

"Yeah?" He asked. He held up a finger and dropped down to his knee, digging around in his backpack. Lana took her backpack off and sat down next to him.

"A sister, or a brother, is like a person that you don't want anyone to hurt. And you keep them safe, and they keep you safe too." Lana pulled a granola bar out of her bag, and began munching on it. It still made her want to puke, but she could feel it filling her with energy.

Talon was quiet for a while as he kept on slowly searching through his bag. After a long while he pulled two gas masks out, and nodded his head, his expression stoic. "Yeah, I guess that's pretty much it."

Lana smiled as she took another bite, tearing off a chunk with her teeth.

"Here, after you finish that up, put this on," he said, tossing one one of the masks to her.

She picked up the mask and examined it, flipping it over and tapping on the glass. He seemed like he understood her confusion, and he sat down beside her, letting out a tired sigh as he did so. "We're close to the end now, last thing we want is to get killed because we breathed in some spores. Since they gave them to all of us in our packs, I'm guessing they'll be wanting to make us use them. We should be ready, especially for when we head into the hotel."

"Okay," Lana said simply. She paused for a moment. "Do you think they'll be there?"

"Everyone will be there if I had to guess," Talon said, he drummed his fingers along the cement while she continued to nibble on her granola bar. "I want to say that I wouldn't think they'd force a fight between Troy and I this early on, but since they're calling a feast, it's clearly what they want. Not like there's anyone else left that'll be fighting there."

"Why do they want you to fight?" Lana asked.

"Because it's District Two versus District One. Brawn against brain. The two heavy favorites. Besides." He shrugged. "There wanna see the big guy fight I'm guessing. And there aren't any other choices besides me."

"He doesn't want to win," she said. "He said so in his interviews."

"Yeah, we'll see if he can prove that and just let me beat him," he said, wincing as he massaged his ankle.

"We'll win," Lana said confidently.

Talon glanced up at her. "I don't think you're in fighting shape exactly." He winced again as he put weight on his ankle, hobbling back up to his feet. "And I've been better too. It doesn't matter though. Troy's my fight, not yours. I'm fighting him alone."

Lana leapt to her feet, stagger and nearly losing her balance as she did, but she kept steady, holding herself up tall as she looked him in the eye. "No," she said. "I can fight."

"I'm sure you could force yourself to, yeah," he grunted, slinging the bag back over his shoulder and motioning for her to grab the mask that was at her feet.

She snatched it and tossed it around her neck, but kept her eyes locked on his, refusing to give an inch. "I fight with you," she stated.

"This isn't negotiable," Talon said. "I'm not letting you try to fight them in your shape. Troy would snap you in half and Vivian would drop you before you could get within a dozen feet of her."

"I'll surprise them," she suggested. "We can work together."

Talon sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Lana-"

"You'll keep me safe," she said, and her voice cracked as it dropped quieter. "And I'll keep you safe too."

Talon went quiet. Lana felt something irritating in her eyes. He eventually shook his head, slipping the mask over his face as he continued walking toward the hotel. "Okay," he said, his voice muffled through the filter. "I won't try and stop you, I doubt I could if I tried. But if we're gonna do this, we're doing it smart. You're gonna listen to everything I say, okay?"

She nodded her head fervently, and followed his lead, slipping the mask over her face. The air felt stiffer and more dry, but the smell wasn't so bad either. Her view was a bit obstructed, but she could still see clearly enough, and followed after Talon as he led them closer to the fight. "Okay," she said. After a moment, she added, "I trust you."

There was a slight limp in his step as he trudged forward, and he didn't turn back around to face her. "Yeah," is all he said.

Jamie Curie

Ty was asleep, his head knocked over as he snored quietly from the chair. It hadn't taken him long to let his guard down. The boy said they would crash and keep watch for the rest of the day, and then go their separate ways once the feast was over. Jamie wasn't too sure if he was overly trusting, overly confident, or just stupid.

But Jamie couldn't wait around for another day. The Games had to end, They had to end now. He could feel himself slipping away. His thoughts were bouncing around his head, scattered and clouded as he struggled to force himself to think. He felt a cold sweat, his entire body wanting to shake. His temper was rising, and he felt the near-unstoppable urge to scream his lungs out.

The bite on his wrist was still trickling out a slow stream of blood. It had surprised him. He walked into a room and it was waiting in there for him, and he managed to slam the door shut only after it sunk its teeth into his wrist.

He thought that it would be fine. It was just a tiny little bite. It had his heart racing and adrenaline pumping through his blood, but other than that he was safe. But then he started feeling sick. It only took an hour for it to start happening, it was like a fever at first, but there was something more to it than that. Something that had him on edge, unable to think straight.

He felt like he was going to die. But he couldn't. He wasn't ready to. There had to be a way to get out, he just had to make the Games end today. Everything felt like it was slipping away from him, when he was so, so close. It was maddening, and he felt like he was ready to snap. But he couldn't. He had to stay in control. He had to just think, why couldn't he think?

A frustrated scream came involuntarily from Jamie as he hit himself in the forehead with his fist. Ty startled awake, reaching for his dagger for a moment before his eyes landed on Jamie.

"What are you doing?" Ty asked in a hushed whisper, he sounded more confused than angry though.

"I'm fine!" He exclaimed, his voice shaking as he spoke. He curled and uncurled his fists, trying to gain control of his muscles that seemed to want to move on their own.

"You're gonna get us both killed, shut up," he hissed, eyeing the door worriedly.

"I can't die. I'm not ready to die. I don't wanna die." His voice was rapid and rabid, panic flowing through him as he rocked on the bed. He scratched at his neck and twitched involuntarily.

"Just, calm down," Ty said, looking uncomfortable as he eyed Jamie strangely.

"I can't. I can't." Jamie said. He hopped onto his feet and began digging through his bag, tossing things to the side. "I need to just-I need-I need-I need."

Ty came over to him, his footsteps pounding against the floor, needles of pain shooting through Jamie's head with every loud step. "Relax, it's not-"

Jamie's hands wrapped around what he was searching for. He didn't feel the pull of that facade tugging away at him. There were no strings holding up that mask. He was operating on base desires. The need to live. They need to kill everyone else in order to make sure of that.

Ty's hand was on his shoulder, and Jamie spun around, diving at the boy's feet and tackling him to the ground. Before he could even react aside from just shouting an expletive and bringing a hand to his head which had hit the corner of a table, Jamie was leaping toward him. He brought the full force of his body behind the dagger, plunging it through Ty's heart.

He let out a pained gasp. Jamie pulled out the dagger and scrambled to his feet, scurrying to the corner and as far away from the boy as possible. He tried to climb to his feet but was unable to, collapsing in a heap as he clutched at his chest, blood pouring out of the gap in his chest.

"I had to-I had-I had-I had to," Jamie stammered, scratching his wrists as he dropped the dagger on the floor. Sweat drenched his neck, dripped down his face, and the boy was still now on the floor.

Boom!

Seven more. There were just seven more. Jamie wanted to climb to his feet, but his knees buckled as he tried to and he just collapsed down to the ground himself, his muscles turning to string that couldn't hold him up as he laid on the ground, twitching violently as he itched all over.

Across from him on the floor, Ty still held a hand over his heart, blood trickling through his fingers as the dagger laid between the two of them. Jamie brought a hand up to his neck, scratching at it desperately until the feeling faded away and he was able to lie down, still aside from the shivers that ran through his entire body. He wrapped his arms around his chest, and a red imprint left its mark everywhere his hand touched.

River

She didn't know where to go after she left the forest. She spent a night wandering in the same way that she did after she first arrived in the arena, but that felt aimless. When the voice had announced from the sky that she should go to the hotel, she decided to listen. She just didn't know where it was that she was supposed to go.

It was another hour of aimless wandering before she received something. Just like the metal pot, it came from the sky in a beeping package that dropped right beside her. Inside was a crudely drawn map, but it got the point across. She trained it to her memory and then packed the paper away in her bag and set off again, and before long she reached the building. It had a bunch of unfamiliar words on the front of it, and they were the same symbols as the one on top of the map, so she decided it must be right.

The front entrance was massive, towering doors that led into a giant room that she could barely see through a bit of exposed glass. She didn't like that, and decided to search for something else. She circled the building two times without finding another entrance, but she did find something promising. A metal staircase started on the outside of the second floor, and while the stairs had collapsed at the bottom so that she couldn't walk up them, there was another way up.

She found a nearby dumpster and pushed it with all of her might, the large box rolling along the ground and into the wall with a loud ding. She wasted no time with the loud sound echoing through the block, hopping on top and leaping onto the staircase, the metal feeling weak beneath her feet but holding steady all the same.

It took her just a few steps to reach a window that's glass was shattered. The room inside was empty and quiet, and so she stepped through, wiggling her way through the window sill and falling feet first onto the ground.

The air was stiffy inside, and there was no light breeze that tickled against her skin. It was warmer and yet she still found herself shivering. She was where they told her to go, so now what? She walked around the room, curiously glancing at everything inside.

It wasn't like the rooms they had in the Capitol. It was more like the ones from before that, dirty and with things cluttered on the floor, glass shards forcing her to watch her steps carefully. There was nothing in there for her, and so she opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

It was all doors just the same as the one that she just walked out of, and she wondered if she was supposed to go into one of them. She decided that if it were the place they wanted her, then there would be some sort of sign to make it stand out. With that in mind she moved on.

Nothing caught her eye in the hallway and so she moved to the end and pushed open a heavy metal door that led to a staircase with even grosser, stingier air than what was in the hallways. It was dark inside, and it took a moment for her eyes to readjust enough for her to feel her way down the steps.

It was pitch black, and she couldn't see any further than a few inches ahead of her, so she swept out with her feet before every step, reaching forward with her hands to see if she could find a wall.

She was halfway through with the staircase when she remembered the thing that she had found in her backpack on the first day. It was a little tube, and when she clicked the button on it a ray of light came out of it.

River took a moment to pause, digging through her bag blindly until she felt her hands grab something that seemed to be the right shape. It took her a moment of fiddling around, but she eventually found the switch and clicked the light on.

A thin stream of light wormed through the room, casting a dim glow on the damp and dark staircase. A thick blood stain dragged down the stairs, leading from where she was standing and down to the landing area, which she could barely see even with the light she had in her hand.

She continued forward, a bit quicker now, her eyes peeled on the steps below her as the blood streak got thinner and thinner. Whatever had come through had been dragged down the stairs, not up. She couldn't hold onto her bow with the light in her hand, but she readied herself to, and made a mental note of the knife at her belt.

River made it down a level, and watched as the blood trail led to the metal door, where it seemed to continue onto the other side. She could see light streaming in from a tiny hole in the concrete wall, and that was enough to finish the decision for her. She would follow the trail. Maybe that was why they had wanted her to come to this place.

She clicked the light off as she pushed through the door, the light nearly blinding as she adjusted to the brightness again. She shielded her eyes as she took a step forward, and didn't realize until too late that her foot wasn't landing on the ground.

River stumbled, trying to catch herself, but it was too late. The massive hole in the ground left nothing for her to grab onto, and she could do nothing but brace for impact as she fell into darkness.

She hit the ground with a thud, her body bouncing as she landed in a slush that cushioned her fall enough to only leave her back aching in pain. She staggered to her feet, and tried to click the button to turn the light back on, but nothing came from it as the sludge water dripped from it. River tossed it down and pulled out her bow, squinting as she tried to take in her surroundings.

The hole was two stories above her, and just enough light made its way in for her to get a vague view of her surroundings. The sludge water covered nearly the entire cement floor, and the floor was pretty open. The air smelled rancid, and the air was much cooler, like she was underground.

She took a step forward, splashing through the sludge, and then paused as her ears perked up, a soft sound in the distance picking her attention.

THUD.

River went perfectly still, crouching down to the ground and drawing an arrow, squinting as hard as she could to make something out through the darkness ahead of her, where the loud, clomping steps were coming from.

THUD.

Beside her, the light that she had dropped flickered to life, blinking in rapid succession as it struggled to keep a steady line going. River froze, her eyes following the light as it shined across the room and to the source of the sounds.

A towering behemoth stood, spores and overgrowth covering every inch of its enlarged body. It's head was less like a head and more like a mushroom, split open with folds spreading across its body. The smell of acid burnt the hairs in her nose. It seemed to be staring right at her as it let out a deep, rumbling roar that sent reverberations throughout the room, causing the water to quake.

Every step seemed to cause the ground to shake, and after a long moment of stillness, it let out another roar, and began staggering slowly toward her.

River dropped the arrow from her string, letting it land in the ankle-deep water as she turned around and ran.

A/N: And we're at the Final Eight. Next update will wrap up this chapter, and after that will be the final chapter of this story! A bit of a cliffhanger to end on here, but I hope that just has y'all excited for what's going to be a very action-packed update to conclude The Hotel! See ya tomorrow!

9th: Ty Bale. Stabbed by Jamie Curie. Ty was such an amazing character. He was one of just five people I ever even considered for victor, and it was for good reason. He struck that perfect blend of fun and funny while also being a serious and complex characters with insecurities and issues. I feel like I kind of lost my grasp on his character toward the end, particularly once Julie was gone I just felt like I didn't know what to do with him. He was such an incredible character though, and him and Julie brought so much life to the pre-games, this story wouldn't be what it is if it weren't for that incredibly fun duo. Thank you so much Celtic for turning this T-Bale meme into an awesome character that made me laugh so many times while also managing to break my heart. RIP

Trivia(1 point): It's the final eight! No F8 interviews b/c I've decided they kind of take the momentum away from the Games. Besides, half of these people don't really have anyone to even interview lol. That means just 3 more chapters between now and the finale! Uh, anyways, I can't think of a trivia question related to this that I haven't already asked as I work through this so instead I'll just give y'all some homework and have you google "last of us bloaters" so you can get a nice mental image of what River is hanging out in the basement with.