Chapter Fifty-Five: Take a Stand

Day Four

Zari Morelett, District Six Female

I'm the first of us to figure out that the Careers in the area aren't alone.

"There's someone inside the building," I whisper to Lacey, thankfully not alerting the Careers in the process. She picks up on who I'm talking about soon enough, especially when they start staring right at us.

Oh, shit. I've heard tales of kids from non-Career districts being recruited to work with the Careers before, but I didn't think it would happen here. If this girl's another lookout, we're screwed. All they need to do is sound the alarm, then the game will be over and we're going to die.

Except, they don't. Even when the patrolling Career makes another pass, she doesn't say or do anything to tip the Career off about our presence. So either she's not a spy, or she's an exceptionally clever one. I think which one it is at this point is a coin toss. Once the Career's at a right angle to the building, thus presumably putting her out of view, the second option goes out the window once the girl starts pantomiming at us.

She points to where the Career presumably is, then makes a slashing motion against her throat.

"Well, I've got two meanings for that," Lacey says. "Either she's saying the Careers will kill us, which, no shit, or she wants to help us kill them."

I'm not sure which one I'm hoping for at this point. "Should I try to send a signal back or something? I'm fluent in sign language, maybe she knows that."

Lacey smiles. "Go right ahead."

I sign as fast as I can, trying to finish before the Career comes back around. "Do you understand this?"

A long pause as the Career circles around, but once she's out of sight again, I (to my infinite surprise) get a message back. "A little."

Okay. Looks like she'll be getting the abridged version then, hopefully she knows enough of the basics that we can work something out. "Help us?"

She nods. No signing needed to understand that.

"Holy crap, Zari," Lacey says. "That was pretty damn impressive."

"Let's hope she didn't misinterpret that," I respond. "That message was pretty brief. I'd expand on it but I'm not sure how much sign language she knows and I don't want her to get things mixed up or confused."

The girl on the other end doesn't know that much sign language, but we don't need that much to formulate a tentative alliance, or at least a partnership against the Careers of sorts, or at least the two that are here. Where the other two went will be a mystery for the ages, and it's not that important at the moment. But Lacey and I manage to work something out, with a little input from the girl inside the building. Once a Career is left behind, the girl inside the building will provide a distraction for us to take advantage of so we can attack the Career.

The thought makes me shudder, but it's more or less our only option. Have to suck it up.

The patrolling girl breaks off her path, and while I can't hear anything she's saying my guess is she's talking to the other Career, who appears to be the shorter girl with black hair from Two who… nope, nope, can't be remembering that now. The contents of their conversation are unclear since we're standing too far away, but at the end of it, the other girl, who I think is from One if I remember correctly, grabs a bag and marches toward the woods in a seemingly-arbitrary direction, and the girl from Two picks up where her partner/ally left off and begins to patrol in circles again.

"I've got this," Lacey says. "Here's the plan. If this works, we're good. But if it becomes clear I'm going to lose, don't try to be the hero. Take the bag and run like hell."

Wait, what the hell? She doesn't want me to try and stop her from getting killed? "But… but…"

"You'd rather be alive than dead, wouldn't you?"

I guess, but what the hell is the point of living if you can't live with what you've become?

Then, once the taller girl has disappeared from sight, the girl inside the building makes her move. And it's not at all in the way I expect. She doesn't shout, or fake a heart attack, or start screaming about random nonsense. She passes straight over all of that and wings one of the many cans in the building at the patrolling Career, actually managing to score a hit on her shoulder.

Say what you will about that plan, it worked. The girl stops dead in her tracks, looking angry enough to set the world on fire from what features I can see, then points a finger in her direction as she shouts a curse word. Several curse words, in fact. I hope the broadcast of the Hunger Games censors what she's saying, but considering it's a show where people regularly get murdered I doubt that's what the morality police are going to go after.

Several seconds later, she's still going on, and that's when Lacey makes her move. Drawing one of the knives from her belt, she steps forward, no longer caring about being in cover, then hurls it at the Career, who doesn't even seem to sense it coming, she's so lost in her profanity-laden tirade.

It flies straight toward her exposed head, the blade flipping end over end as it comes closer and closer, the girl never noticing a thing…

And then everything shatters. The knife keeps flipping end over end, having missed the girl's head by a precious few inches between life and death, before it slams against the wall of the building, falling limply to the ground.

Right as the girl stops ranting and turns toward us, presumably trying to figure out where the knife came from, Lacey darts out from behind the bush, screaming bloody murder as she whips a knife out of her belt with each hand. They definitely don't have the range of whatever this girl's weapon is, but it doesn't look like a disadvantage that's too severe. But still, Lacey's fighting a Career with a disadvantage to her name. The odds of coming out of that are low in any circumstances.

Damn it, I don't care what Lacey said, I can't just sit here and do nothing! I did that for Alexa and it got her killed. I wouldn't be able to live myself if I made that mistake again.

Galadia Devinson, District Two Female

Well, nearly getting murdered by an unseen assassin was not the way I expected to start my morning, but it'll have to do, at least after I get rid of this infuriating girl. However, once she dodges the first swing of my machete and immediately launches into a counterattack I just barely manage to dodge myself, I instantly understand this girl is a threat.

Several failed attempts to stab her later, that theory is confirmed. She's agile enough to dodge all of my attacks and she's too damn small to make a good target, and considering she's got more knives on her than I have time to count at the moment, that means I can't run back to our weapon stash to grab something that can get her at a distance. Too easy to get hit in the back.

There comes a time when everyone must swallow their pride and ask for help, and this is definitely that time for me. I'd rather be embarrassed than dead.

"Clara!" I yell her name as loudly as I can between strikes. "Get your butt over here! I'm being swarmed!" A bit of an exaggeration, but does that matter at this point?

She charges me again, and I swing hard, making sure not to overextend myself, but she throws herself to the ground and rolls, meaning that while my frenzied stab down takes out a chunk of her hair it misses anything important. She throws herself to her feet and lunges right for me with one of her knives, but I manage to take a step back and she can't reach, blocking the desperate, clumsy knife throw that follows. She leaps backward, pulling out a new knife like nothing just happened, and then the dance resumes.

Clara can't be far away. I should just be able to stall until she comes and can help me off this bitch, but that's only a step above the worst-case scenario. I want this one. If Clara wants kills, she can fucking find her own.

Another knife soars my way, which I block with the machete, the impact jolting my arms a bit but not badly enough to prevent me from charging. Which, of course, I do, trying to catch the girl off-guard while she's down a knife. I move in close, get inside her guard, she dodges this one a hair too slowly and I manage to slice her arm, a six-inch line that's already starting to bleed, and that's when I know I've got this. Even as she draws a new knife with that very same arm, it's shaking noticeably, meaning she can't throw with it accurately anymore. All I need to do is get in close one more time and I've got this.

Except this girl doesn't want to make it easy. She puts some space between me and her, then beckons to me like she's trying to set up a trap. This girl's not from Three, but I'm still not taking chances, not with Clara on the horizon.

"Not happening," I say aloud. "You want to get me, then come get me!"

Right as I finish my sentence, whatever I might have said next gets interrupted by a monumental thud. I whip my head around, expecting the worst, but then it turns out to just be a girl with a rock in her hand, who tripped over seemingly nothing. Friend? Ally? Someone unrelated? I don't know and they don't matter right now, time to confront the—

Something cold rips into my chest. My head moves back into its proper orientation, and that's when I notice the handle sticking out of my ribcage.

Oh.

The bitch got me.

And it hurts. Really badly, in fact. Enough that my legs more or less turn to jelly and send me toppling.

Well, that sucks. Guess I won't be able to prove anyone wrong after all. I might as well apologize to all the brainy Careers I just fucked for the years to come…

A sharp pain echoes through my shin from the girl kicking me as I try to get back up, but my legs are refusing to work with my brain despite it feverishly screaming at me that I need to live at least a little longer. Then the pain repeats for my hip, then my shoulder, then the side of my head, even as I keep my mouth clenched so I can at least die with dignity if nothing else.

The girl snarls at me from overhead, knife in each hand, as color and light rapidly drain from the scene before me. As if to increase my suffering even further, the girl spits on me, my brain only dimly registering it, before she speaks the final words I'll ever hear.

"This is for Alexa, asshole."

Then the knife comes down, and my short stay on this earth has ended.

Clara Ridley, District One Female

The cannon fires right as I exit the woods.

As soon as I can see what's happening, it becomes clear that Galadia lost her fight. Well, that's just fucking great. I can manage without her for now, but I really don't want to have to go up against the Careers I ditched alone. Too many variables, too much bullshit at play. I don't have time to deal with bullshit right now.

But, in slightly more tolerable news, the tributes responsible are still there, and they seem more focused on pillaging our supplies than trying to flee the scene.

Then the taller one perks up, screams, and starts running, causing the shorter one to do the same.

I've got the advantage over them this time: they're focused on carrying they're stuff, whereas I don't really have to do that. They gain a bit more distance on me when I stop by our pile of supplies to drop off anything nonessential for combat, but I manage to start moving again while they're still in my line of sight.

Neither of them are necessarily slow runners, even burdened, but it doesn't take long before I start closing the gap on them. However, soon I reach the woods, meaning I have to be careful about where I place my feet so I don't trip, a lesson learned from last year's girl from One. She was the clumsiest Career I've ever seen before or since, and always seemed to trip or drop something at the most inconvenient times imaginable. Surprisingly, that didn't lead to her undoing, but she didn't survive either way, so the point's moot.

The shorter girl manages to look behind her, and that's when things start taking a turn for the worse. "Zari! Split up!"

The taller girl, presumably Zari, swerves right and the shorter one swerves left, meaning now I have to pick one to chase and stick with them. Without hesitation, I choose Zari's friend simply because of the belt of knives she's wearing. Those knives probably killed Galadia, regardless of who did it, so I'm blaming her either way.

I've got a spear, but considering the girl's size and how much of her is covered by the backpack, throwing it might be a complete waste of time, at least until I can get in close enough that the force will knock her down. Thus, I focus on speeding up, trying to catch up to the girl before I exhaust myself or she pulls some bullshit trick out of her ass to escape.

I keep pumping, closing the distance more and more even as the girl keeps swerving wildly to try and throw me off, the range where my spear is valid nearing by the second, until I finally get close enough that I risk it and hurl the spear, it soaring through the air toward the girl.

While it doesn't connect with her, it does connect with her backpack, spearing it deep and sending her flying forward from the sheer force. However, through a combination of surefootedness and sheer bullshit, she somehow manages to stay upright and keep running, and clearly the spear didn't penetrate enough flesh to slow her down as she's still going.

Then she gets the bright idea to drop her bag, making sure to throw it in my path as she does so so I have to dodge it, barely keeping my feet in the process. The girl's got to be getting tired at this point, it's been too long: the manic sprint I started with has tapered off to a regular sprint, surely she'll eventually do the same, right?

The girl seems to be aware of this, because that's the precise moment she vaults from the ground to the top of an oversized boulder, and from there leaps to a low tree bough. Despite her stature, she manages to pull herself up a few branches before I get there. Great. Now she's far enough ahead trying to climb up after her isn't a good idea, and unless I do make the climb, she's out of range of the weapon I have.

"Oh, fuck you," I pant. "You seriously think you'll outwit me forever just by climbing a stupid tree? I'm smarter than that, I'll get you eventually!"

My target responds, her voice eerily flat considering the circumstances. "Oh, you weren't what I was trying to dodge with that."

Wait, what the—

A roar shatters my train of thoughts, leaving me face to face with a very big and very angry bear, standing maybe twenty feet away from me.

Oh, come the fuck on, Gamemakers! You're seriously giving her a goddamned deus ex machina bear, now? And for what? What the fuck is your goal here? It's not for a good fight, all I have is one short-range weapon that isn't useful with a bear. It's not to establish a rivalry, I already have one with the girl from Three. Why must you fuck me over like this?

Unfortunately, retreating is the only sensible option here. "You're dead, asshole. Right after the girl from Three."

"Good luck with that," the treebound girl says, that same eerie flatness still penetrating her voice.

The bear chases me almost all the way back to our former base before it (or the Gamemakers, I don't know and don't care), decides I've gone through enough. And once it peels off to return to the woods and I return to where we stored our supplies, I notice something even worse.

The girl from Three is gone. She managed to flee the building in the ten or so minutes I took trying and failing to chase down Galadia's murderers. Meaning the whole fucking purpose of us camping out here instead of literally anywhere else is gone. Meaning Galadia died for absolutely nothing, and I didn't even manage to avenge her in the process.

I'm not much of a screamer, and I've used a lot more gratuitous curse words in the past few minutes than I normally do, but if there was ever a time to just scream swear words at the sky for a while, I'm pretty sure now's that time. I've got plenty of time with no one else around me and no real obligations for today, might as well get started now.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"

Spark Emmersen, District Five Male

I wonder what death will taste like. I mean, everyone and everything has their theories on what we feel or see as we die, and a strange few might even have an opinion on the smell, but now I'm really starting to wonder about that and I'm guessing I'll get the opportunity to experience it for myself very soon, because my heart feels like a hammer-blow slamming into my ribcage over and over again and my eyes are burning really badly and my stomach's become a black hole threatening to suck in everything I hold dear and I think my legs are actively trying to kill me, although maybe my failed attempt to sleep and just twitching like crazy the entire time while I hummed to myself isn't helping any of those matters.

The sun is up and I feel slick because I've spent my entire time in the arena sweating like crazy, I really wish I could find someplace to take a bath in peace or something because I'm pretty confident my stink's going to make people fall over and die if I let it fester much longer, but to counter that, if everyone else here dies I get to live, so maybe I should just keep going with this and maybe see if that works. It can't be worse than any of the other plans that keep forcing their way into my brain whether I want them to or not, so going along with it and hoping for the best seems like a very viable strategy.

I don't know who this is that's lurching around inside my head and whispering these evil thoughts but I'm guessing it's not the same person who left District Five. I haven't been normal since I got here, and I feel like whatever thin string tying me to normalcy snapped when Catarina got sent screaming into the void and left me alone, alone, alone. I'm sure other tributes have to be going through the same ridiculous dilemma I currently find myself stuck in except maybe their progression is much slower because they're more stress-resistant or whatever, not like it matters at the moment since I can't interact with any of them nor figure out their mental state from here, I'd need to be watching from afar for that.

If I happened to be watching from affar instead of being subjected to this nightmare maybe today would be a beautiful day, with more sunshine than I've gotten in my life and the temperature, if hotter than compared to before, would still be pleasant enough in short clothing but the Arena can never be beautiful simply because it is the Arena, and that's fact. I don't care what anyone else says on the matter and I have no idea why I'd even be listening to them anyway, since chances are everyone here is probably gunning to kill me and I have to get used to that.

They'll find me soon whether I like it or not.

Soon, the world will have one less of me in it and at this point I'm no longer sure whether that's a good or bad thing. I guess that will wind up being subject to the interpretations of the masses, and I know for sure most people don't agree on things anymore because everyone always turns out super argumentative especially in places like these for reasons I can only speculate on. Maybe it's me, I wouldn't know anymore.

But until the date where I no longer am present in this world I must keep going on for the sake of those who care about me if nothing else because it wouldn't be fair to them if I just decided to lay down and die and I know they wouldn't actually want me to do that, at least I hope. And thus, onward I go, slogging on my death march to nowhere as the world continues to unfold around me and thoughts get flung screaming through my head.

Eulogies:

-Galadia Devinson, District 2 Female, 14th Place (Killed by Lacey): Galadia was another tribute that I really had fun writing, between her attitude and the way she bounced off Clara. Unfortunately, while I can't necessarily say her arrogance was her undoing, it definitely played a factor in her death, leaving the Arena with one fewer legacy tribute. Thanks for sending her in, Galaxy842.

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)

-Lacey: 1 unassisted (Galadia)

-Godric: 2 assisted (Faolan, Marius)

-Odysea: 2 assisted (Nascar, Artesia)

-Sienna: 1 assisted (Marius)

-Artesia, Thomiah: 1 assisted (Nascar)

Alliances:

-Loyalist Careers: Godric, Sienna

-Anti-Careers: Thomiah, Odysea

-Two Broke(n) Girls: Zari, Lacey

-Misery Loves Company: Romeo, Maxxer

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

Author's Notes:

-Quick turnaround this time around! Hate to lower your expectations, but don't expect the next chapter to come out anywhere near this quickly. I just had an easier time with this once since most of the chapter centers around what's more or less a single scene, and everything else was just stream-of-consciousness rambling. That just happened to be something I had an easier time writing.

-I know the first scene in particular might raise some eyebrows, but Sotia's an exceptionally smart person by the standards of a District known for producing exceptionally smart people. Personally, I believe having her know a bit of sign language isn't stretching her capabilities that far, even if Zari didn't know about that beforehand.

-Furthermore, I'm crediting Galadia's death as Lacey's kill alone because she was the only one to actually lay a hand on her, even if Zari and Sotia both helped. That's why Aryion's death from earlier got classified as a suicide instead of being a combined kill from Clara and Galadia. I'm sure some of the Capitolites betting on over/under kill counts for certain tributes might be mad at me for that one, but I hope you're not.

-Because this chapter covered such a short time frame, I might bend the rules a bit and have three chapters representing Day 4 instead of two. I'll see how the next chapter comes along before I get to that.

-That's all I have to say. See you next chapter!