Chapter Fifty-Three: The Best Defense is a Good Offense

Night Three

Toren Laris, District Nine Female

The silence of the night is broken by the anthem once more.

In spite of myself, I look up to watch, as I'm sure everyone else is as well. The girl from Five, someone I don't think I ever spoke to, shows up, and then the anthem fades away soon afterward. Only one death today.

If my count is correct, that means we have fifteen tributes remaining. Unfortunately, most of those fifteen are far better at this than I will ever be at this. I need to start making moves soon or I'll be dead.

I've been wandering around for a while, both picking up whatever I know will be useful (unfortunately, that's not very much at the moment) and looking out for potential allies (I'll take anyone at this point, I haven't cared about that since Marius was killed), but that's the bare minimum tributes have to do to not just be killed on the spot these days. I need something interesting to break up what has to be crushing monotony in the eyes of any viewers from the Capitol.

All I need now is a decent tree to sleep in and then I can go to bed and hope things will be better in the morning. I've already got the wire out, it'll only be a few minutes—

And then I make a move to march through some tall grass and literally almost trip over someone crouching there. He jolts backward, but given that he was on his hands and knees at the time and he's burdened with a ridiculous amount of cargo, it's no surprise that he can't do much else at the moment.

Said cargo is a large bag of miscellaneous supplies. A very overstuffed one, to boot: that thing is bulging so badly it's a miracle it doesn't explode on the spot and send precious items flying everywhere. And he's completely unarmed. That can't be very smart, but then again, I'm about to potentially take him on armed only with something that isn't even a weapon by most standards, so I'm not really in a position to say anything about brains right now.

Brandishing the wire in the closest thing to a threatening gesture that I can manage (maybe I can use it as a strangulation aid?), I look him dead in the eye, taking note that he visibly flinches when I do that.

"Listen, buddy," I say, making sure he can see the wire in my hands. "I don't want to have to kill you. How about you just give me some of your supplies and we'll go our separate ways like nothing happened. Okay?"

He nods in response, eyes never leaving the wire.

"Good," I say. "I just want some food so I don't starve, and you look like you have more than enough. A few cans should suffice."

He takes his time, but it looks like he's actually complying with me. That's good. He could have easily run, although with that many supplies weighing him down running might not be the best option. Probably why he chose this option instead of that one, after all. Before too long, a few cans filled with unknown things are laid on the ground, alongside a single pack of crackers.

I collect the items in silence, watching him closely the whole time for any indication of a trap. There doesn't seem to be any, and I return to my original position without incident.

"I'll give District Three my thanks if I win," I say. "Thank you. Hopefully we don't meet again."

I turn around and walk away with my new supplies, leaving him behind. I listen for a short while to ensure I'm not being tailed, but after about half a mile or so I think I can safely conclude that's probably not his style.

Well, if the Capitol wanted something interesting to happen, they just got it. It wasn't much, but at the very least it meant I displayed some real aggression toward another human being. Sure, the stakes are going to go up the further in I find myself, but this appears to have cleared the bar for now.

A little bit better off than I found myself before, I march on, looking for a safe place to stop for the night.

Godric Runestone, District Two Male

At this point, I'm seriously wondering if the Gamemakers just hate our guts or something, because this is the second time something has attacked us in less than twenty-four hours.

Fortunately, Sienna hadn't even gone to sleep yet, so it didn't take much effort for the two of us to prepare for what's going to be a nasty fight. I think it's a bear even if I'm not one hundred percent sure about that, but there are plenty of things to be sure about here: it's big, it has blood on its teeth (another tribute?), and it looks enraged.

"You have got to be kidding me," Sienna shouts as the bear seems to prepare for a charge. "How are we supposed to do anything if we're constantly being attacked?"

"I don't know," I yell back, then the bear charges us and it's go time.

Sienna's trident has enough reach that she can score a nice stab on the bear while avoiding taking a hit herself, but my sword's far better for facing another person than it is for something like this. However, that leads to the hatching of an idea to end this quickly.

"Can you keep it distracted for a little? I have a plan."

"I'll try," Sienna responds. Then, she proceeds to grab a still-intact rabbit corpse that's one of the few pieces of food we scored during yesterday's hunt, holding it in her free hand like she's going to try and bludgeon the bear with it. I can see what she's trying to do, but I wonder if doing that while holding a weapon at the same time is a recipe for disaster.

It seems to be working for now, though. The bear can clearly smell Sienna's holding what should be food, and thus loses its focus on me to go after her and only her. Sienna manages to leap onto the lower end of the Cornucopia as it gets close enough, then hauls herself out of range even as the bear claws and scratches against the smooth side of the Cornucopia's horn. While she dangles the treat just out of range, I pick up a weapon with a longer range and move in from behind.

Then, the bear somehow manages to find purchase with its claws on the smooth Cornucopia and begins to freaking climb up the side, turning Sienna's taunts into screams as it lashes out with a front paw. She manages to pull back and avoid the worst of it, but it still scratches her arm hard enough to draw blood, causing her to shove her trident into the creature as hard as she can before throwing herself off the Cornucopia, her landing far from graceful but at least clean enough to prevent any further injuries.

She landed a really solid blow, sinking the trident several inches into the bear's back, causing it to roar in agony before I add onto it with a spear that penetrates just as deeply, and in the same place too.

Still, even with two weapons lodged in it, the thing scrambles off the Cornucopia and roars at us before preparing to charge again. And now neither of us have weapons unless you count the rabbit Sienna's still clutching. My sword's still lying in the grass, so I rush over to pick that up, but the bear still seems interested in Sienna's rabbit above all else.

"Get rid of it," I manage to yell. "We can find another!"

Sienna complies and throws the rabbit right at the bear's face, which bounces off its snout before crashing into the grass, right as the bear snatches it up and devours it in one bite in a sequence of blood and unpleasantly loud crunching noises. Fortunately, that provides just the opening I need, and right when its attention comes back to us, I jab my sword upward and enter the creature's head right below where its chin would be.

It roars one final time, but then it falls over with a thud and stops twitching almost instantly, as if it had forgotten it was supposed to be dead until now. We stay in place for a short while, breathing hard as the adrenaline rush subsides and a sense of normalcy is reestablished once more.

Sienna seems okay, even if a thin trickle of blood is making its way down her arm from the bear's claws. "Well, at least all we lost is breakfast."

"Shame," I say. "I was looking forward to eating that." I meant it, too: we've barely gotten any protein over the past few days apart from a couple of fish Sienna managed to catch while we took a rest break by a stream, and a low, constant sense of hunger has settled in over the last twenty-four hours or so: the kind that makes you eat a whole loaf of bread or pack of crackers without even thinking about stopping.

We've lived through that so far, though. And once we find a lake or something with more fish, that'll be a worry we can check off the list.

Sienna seems to have something else on her mind, though.

"I'm wondering what Clara and Galadia are going through right now. We've gone through some real shit, so I really hope they're at least dealing with the same amount of nonsense we have."

Galadia Devinson, District Two Female

I volunteered to take the first shift, just because I was seriously worried Clara might have an aneurysm if she listened to that irritating girl from Three any longer.

At this point, I'm wondering if mocking other people turns her on or something because once our initial conversation ended, she's been going on for literal hours. Even with Clara being sponsored earplugs for both of us alongside a sympathetic note from her mentor, it's still not enough. Plugging our ears just makes her talk louder and she doesn't seem to care that she's drawing a shitload of attention to this location. Plus, we need to be able to hear if something's coming from behind.

My shift starts at a plodding walk, pacing circles around the building to monitor all directions, the girl from Three firing taunts and insults at me every time I enter her line of sight. I ignore her for a while aside from the occasional middle finger, but all that seems to do is make her more determined to fulfill her endless desire to piss us the hell off.

Eventually, I can't take this shit anymore. I don't care what the hell I need to do to shut this bitch up but I'm doing it. Fortunately for me, there seems to be an easy enough means of trying via a nearby pile of rocks that was probably the leftovers of her tests on the pressure-plate system this place seems to have going on. Maybe not all of the tiles just spit out fire when you step on them: perhaps some of them could harm her even in there. Sure, that's not necessarily true, but it can't hurt to try, right?

Unfortunately, where I'm doing it is in Clara's line of vision and she does not seem happy that I've stopped moving. "What the hell is your deal?"

"Seeing if I can shut her up," I reply, throwing the first rock as I do. It skitters across two tiles, the first releasing another column of fire and the second seemingly doing nothing. I could note that that tile is safe, but chances are we're not going to get to enter there for quite some time so I don't see the point.

Clara doesn't like that explanation. "What if someone tries to ambush us?"

"They won't. She's been so loud that everyone and their mother thinks that this is some kind of elaborate trap," I say, hurling a second rock in the process. Unfortunately, that's precisely when things go topsy-turvy.

"Galadia!" Clara hisses this, pointing in my general direction.

I whirl around to see what the hell her deal is, and that's when three things happen.

One, something sharp and cold rips into my shoulder, flooding it with white-hot pain.

Two, I see the boy from Four standing in front of me clutching the other end of it, the most obvious sign he's not here to make friends.

Third, I instinctively swing my own weapon, one with a far superior range to a knife, at him, slicing a clean line through his chest in the process, alongside one of his hands.

Fortunately for him, I don't enjoy prolonging anyone's misery that much, or at least in this manner. My assailant barely even has time to register he's missing a hand and scream before I make a second slash, this time a bit higher up.

His good hand clutches at his ruined throat for a second (which is probably where he'd been aiming when he tried to sneak up on me, now that I think about it), but then the cannon fires and he falls backward, his body thumping against the ground like the useless meat it now is.

Well, that just happened. Fortunately, it's over, and I got out of it relatively unscathed. I even managed to snag a kill while I was at it, so that's all good. My shoulder hurts like a bitch and is probably going to bleed even worse, but that's nothing some gauze and painkillers can't fix. It's not even for my dominant arm, so my weapon-wielding skills remain intact. A net positive, all things considered.

Clara, now back to full alertness, doesn't appear to see that the same way. She marches over, grabs me by the shoulders (although at least she makes a point of avoiding the knife) and shakes me hard. "Look, I get it. That girl is a little shit. You still can't get distracted like that! If I hadn't been awake, you would have been dead!"

"Well, that little shit is the reason you were awake in the first place, so I think it about evens out," I say. "You want me to send her a thank-you card?"

"Don't you fucking get smart with me," Clara says. "And how are you treating this so damn casually? You're supposed to be the intelligent Career, I assume you know what death entails."

Chuckling, much subdued from before but still present, emanates from the inside of the building. "If she's classified as an intelligent Career, I'd hate to see what a stupid one looks like." A pause for breath, then, "Oh, wait…"

Clara doesn't respond verbally to that. She does, however, stoop to pick up a fist-sized rock from the same pile that I found and hurl it at her. I have no idea what that was supposed to accomplish, doubly so when her target simply ducks and watches the rock sail harmlessly over her head before smashing into the back wall. It doesn't even get scratched, so that probably means penetrating the building by breaking down one of the walls isn't an option either.

"Shut the fuck up," Clara says. "Slimy pieces of shit like you don't get to mock my intelligence."

A beat of silence. "Then what would you like me to mock you for? I take requests."

I manage a smirk. "Who's letting her distract them now?"

"One more crack like that and I finish what he started," Clara says, her face bright red.

It says a lot that I'm honestly not sure whether or not she's joking about that, but either way I decide to quit poking the bear. Not worth the trouble this early and I'm sure there'll be plenty of time for it while I'm not recovering from an assassination attempt. Plus, she needs her sleep just like any rational human being and I don't want her brain-dead tomorrow.

Clara lies back down, leaving me to hunt through our supplies until I find some gauze. Taking pains to ensure I cause as little additional damage as possible, I slowly pull the knife out, gritting my teeth against the pain as I do, then dress the wound as best I can. Then, I resume patrol, continuing my slow, lazy circles around the building once more.

And then the whole stupid cycle starts up again. All that, and this girl still. Won't. Shut. Up.

Maxxer "Max" Bent, District Twelve Male

I really wish we'd just stopped for the night, but Romeo wanted to find somewhere a bit less open and I can't blame him too much for that. If someone with ill intentions finds us, we're even more screwed than we are already.

Trudging through the woods in near-total darkness is bad enough, considering I can barely see my hand in front of my face, but every time I hear rustling it gets a million times worse. With no evidence as to what's causing it, my imagination remains free to run wild, and with someone like me it always defaults to the worst case scenario.

Then Romeo stops moving, which I can only tell because I nearly walk into him and send us both tumbling. Thank goodness the terrain around here is flat.

He makes a couple of motions I can't interpret very well, but then I hear a spine-tingling howl that sounds far too close for comfort, and that's signal enough. I've heard those kinds of howls plenty of times back home, but at least then I had a wall and a (rarely) electrified fence between me and their source. Here, all I've got are my hands and another person of unknown combat capability.

Far more quickly than I expected, Romeo's bent down, then right afterward he presses a pointy stick into my hand, clenching what remains of his fingers around a palm-sized rock. It's not much, but it's a step above going at it with fists.

Then I notice the wolf's eyes, two beads of yellow smothered in ink, and I point the stick at them. "Something's over there!"

That's when it charges. The stick's too short to use without getting within biting distance and getting mauled has never been a pleasant way to go, so I dodge the best I can, stumbling on an unseen root but managing to stay upright. Romeo appears to do the same, since I don't hear any screaming, but I can't tell since all I see of him after he moves is a shadowy outline. Our assailant vanishes for a short time, then its eyes pop back into clarity as it circles around and comes at us again.

Romeo appears to dance out of the way, jumping back into my line of sight right as I'm forced to move or get hit, and I slam against him trying to evade, sending him toppling with a screech as I somehow stay upright.

He pops back up reasonably fast, but then the wolf howls again.

This time, it gets answered by several more howls, none of which sound very far away. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.

"Max?" Romeo speaks again, dodging the wolf's attempt at taking him down once more before his frame disappears. "If there was ever a time to try the serum, I think now would be it!"

As many doubts as I have about ingesting it, I think anyone would agree a chance at avoiding death is better than no chance. We can barely hold our own against one of these things, a group of them will kill us. And I don't think we stand much of a chance of outrunning them in this pitch darkness.

Serum it is. "You or me?"

"I'd say you," Romeo says, tripping over something in an attempt to dodge the wolf's next pass, nearly faceplanting in the process. "Here! Take it!"

I see two more sets of eyes, one yellow, one green, as Romeo tosses the vial in my direction. Fortunately, the vial's luminescent enough that it's still easy to see as I stoop and pick it up. Without any hesitation, I pop the cap and start draining the vial, the liquid tasteless and slippery in the mouth. Right as I finish the vial and let it drop from my shaking fingers, I hear a noticeable thump as Romeo screams, and a subsequent cracking noise I really don't want to know the cause of.

As I run toward where he stands, feeling something furry brush my leg in the process, it begins to happen.

The world blurs until my surroundings are nothing more than smears of gray.

My fingers and toes twitch, my teeth grind, my head throbs, my heart races.

Scents like nothing I've ever experienced before flood my nose.

Then I'm rocked by something that could only be described as something trying to force its way out. A deep, rumbling growl erupts from something inside me, something I've never noticed before but I know wants out of me at all costs.

Fortunately, our attackers provide a perfect outlet. Grab the wolf pinning Romeo by the scraggly fur on its back, yank upwards, toss it as far away as I can and listen to its howls of pain and fear. The other two come at me, snarling the whole way, but they're no problem. Stand in place, let them get close, then snatch the closer one and smash it into its companion. Both of them seem dizzy and weaker but they still come at me. Alright, more fun incoming! Wind up, kick the closer one in the snout as hard as I can, it retreats in a state of disrepair with a badly disfigured face, and as the other one comes closer I take the stick and force it as deep into its snarling mouth as I can manage, resulting in a wet cracking sound as the creature's howls degenerate into screeches. Ripping the stick back out produces a spray of red and the beast staggers for a few moments longer before collapsing.

The other two are still kicking, albeit in a weakened state, so I've still got plenty to do. The one whose face I just kicked in circles around and tries again but Romeo manages to slap it with the rock and I handle the rest, jabbing it with the stick as hard as I can until it snaps and blood starts flowing out in rivers of red before the thing stops moving. The last wolf seems to think better of its attempts to kill us, but I'm not done with them yet.

"Hey! Come back here!"

Before long, I catch up with the last of them, managing to throw myself on top of it before it can get very far. I grab both sides of its misshapen head and yank it to the side, feeling its frame give out under me as the neck breaks. I hear the beat of whatever heart resides in its body stop beating, no fanfare, no buildup, no anything. A switch flicked off and nothing more.

Well, that was fun, but now it's over. Time to find something else I can release everything into. Maybe one of the nearby trees will suffice.

Launching myself at the trunk, I scramble up to the nearest branch without any hesitation, listening to the wind rushing in my ears and feeling absolutely giddy at the sense of total freedom. I hear a muddied voice below me, but I have no idea what it's saying and couldn't care less anyway, so I begin the grind of pulling myself from branch to branch.

The sky's the limit. Too bad I can't make it quite that high. But making it to the top of this tree will suffice.

For now, anyway.

Eulogies:

-Vick Even, District 4 Male, 15th Place (Killed by Galadia): Honestly, I don't really have much to say about Vick. He feels like the only character remaining I was unable to really give an "arc" of any kind once he entered the Arena. At the very least, though, he'll be able to see his mother again soon. Thanks for sending him in, Professor R. J. Lupin1.

Kills:

-Other: 2 unassisted (Aryion [suicide], Catarina [mosquito muttations]), 1 assisted (Artesia [bear muttation])

-Galadia: 2 unassisted (Fox, Vick), 1 assisted (Alexa)

-Clara: 1 unassisted (Remi), 2 assisted (Faolan, Alexa)

-Godric: 2 assisted (Faolan, Marius)

-Odysea: 2 assisted (Nascar, Artesia)

-Sienna: 1 assisted (Marius)

-Artesia, Thomiah: 1 assisted (Nascar)

Alliances:

-Loyalist Careers: Godric, Sienna

-Separatist Careers: Clara, Galadia

-Anti-Careers: Thomiah, Odysea

-Two Broke(n) Girls: Zari, Lacey

-Misery Loves Company: Romeo, Maxxer

-Loners (for now): Rhaemyr, Sotia, Spark, Toren

Author's Notes:

-Longer chapter this time around! Joined my college's Creative Writing Club, so that means I have an uninterrupted block of time during the week to write. Plus, I had a lot of fun writing a few of these scenes. (Galadia and Sotia are best friends in a parallel dimension where they were both born in the same District, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.)

-The serum has officially come into play! There will be more uses, don't worry about it. This was just the first. As we get deeper into this, more of its, ahem, side effects will become more prominent.

-One of Sotia's lines (you'll know which one) was shamelessly ripped from Sword Art Online Abridged, a web series that I highly recommend even if you're not familiar with the source material. Very few things have made me laugh harder.

-I've got nothing left to say. See you next chapter!