Day Four. Early morning.
District Eleven's Angel Hale's POV
Out of my line of sight, Aerin seemed to be enjoying himself in the rain. Even though he wasn't acting as overjoyed as he was before, I could still tell he was having fun in the rain. Hell, he wasn't any different then just about everyone back home.
I knew what Aerin was doing behind me, he wanted to take a clean shower, I couldn't blame him since we had been in the arena for three days and were on our fourth. We knew what the hot sun could do to the human body, and for the last three days and nights we've been sweating it out in our clothes that we haven't even changed since we arrived in the arena. It wasn't the most pleasant feeling in the world, having smelly clothes on our body and not washing for several days, but I dealt with it. I just wished that our backpacks could have contained some spare clothes among the many items we could have gotten along with the items we got.
Aerin was cleaning himself right now, and he was close to me, about twenty feet or so behind me, and I really wanted to see him, but out of respect, I wasn't going to look at him in his state. Even thought I really wanted to.
I didn't want to shower for the simple reason that I didn't want to take off my clothes, I didn't feel comfortable stripping my clothes off in the arena for two reasons. The first one was because this whole thing was being broadcasted live to the entire world, and I didn't want everyone to see me naked.
The Capital censored the broadcast by blackening the screen out or showing something else happening in the arena. But I was still paranoid about what they broadcasted in the Capital. They might watch an uncensored version of what was going on in the arena, so even if those in the districts didn't see, the Capital citizens might. I bet some Capital women and stupid little girls are lusting over Aerin's body if they have uncensored coverage.
That thought burned my mind and made me angry at them. They didn't know him, they shouldn't even think of him. They probably didn't have the respect to look away from him, they probably couldn't control themselves enough to not look away from the T.V right at this moment. Stupid little whores!
And what if the Capital suddenly changed their rules on broadcasting? What if they suddenly started to uncensor everything to the districts? There was nothing that said that they couldn't do that. What the hell could stop them from broadcasting everything to us on a whim? They could do whatever they damn well wanted, and we, the districts, couldn't stop them. Just like how we couldn't stop them in the second rebellion.
The second reason that I didn't want to take my clothes off other then probably being lusted over by Capital men. It was being attacked in the open, and being naked while doing that. That would have been really embarrassing. No time to get back into your clothes while being attacked, and I could almost guarantee that they'd have to broadcast a fight, tributes being naked or not the Capital wouldn't want to miss a fight and a potential death. And I didn't want any of the other tributes to see me like that. Well, maybe I'd let one see me like that but that's about it.
The second reason was strongly enforced by the fact that the white haired, red eyed Alexander Natas had attacked me right in the open last night with Aerin only maybe thirty five feet away from me. I took his beating to prevent him from knowing where Aerin was, because I didn't want him to find Aerin and kill him or do whatever he was thinking of doing to him. It scared me to think that someone could do that while your ally was only several tens of feet away.
"Hey Angel," I heard Aerin say behind me as I was thinking of him last night. "Why didn't you tell him?" I then said to him what I was thinking just a few seconds ago.
"I didn't want anything to happen to you." I told him. And it was true, I didn't want anything to happen to Aerin, he had gone through enough trying to protect me. I felt as if I hadn't done enough for this group. I helped Sami make a homemade bow, that failed to protect her. I'm not one of the strong tributes, so I couldn't fight back against that albino. I felt as if I needed to rely on Aerin for just about anything. Which I felt was wrong of me. Aerin didn't need the stress.
"But," Aerin said with some discomfort in his voice. "He was beating you, and he carved that word into your head." Yeah, he did, I should know, I was the one that he was doing it to. But it felt good that he worried about me, it made me feel as if I meant something to him other then just another tribute in the arena.
"And he was going to kill you," I told my ally remembering what my attacker had said to me. 'I just like hurting you,'. He was just killing time until he had reached Aerin. And those eyes, those red eyes were filled with the love of violence, I could see that in his eyes, he loved to hurt me and was planning on hurting Aerin the same way he was hurting me. Or maybe worse. "He was going to kill us both."
Back home in District Eleven, my dad would hit my sisters and I while shouting cruel insults at us. He shouted at us for whatever reason he wanted, but he really liked to blame me for my mother's death. He also liked to insult me about my breasts that were bigger then every girl that was my age and even girls that were older them me. He'd call me a slut because of them and say that I'd want to make a living off of them. He'd call me a useless little bitch and slap me around for whatever reason. That's how I got to be a tough girl, or so I would have liked to think back then. After my encounter with Alexander, I found that my father wasn't the worst person that actually hurt me. I knew that there were worse people in the district then my father, all you needed to do was look outside to see at least one peacekeeper, but they normally wouldn't do anything to you unless you broke a rule. My father would hurt me and insult me, but that white haired bastard would touchier me, kill me, and insult me the whole way. He was worse then my father by a long shot.
My father would mostly do it out of anger, I could see it in his eyes back home when he beat my sisters and I. He didn't care about us, so he didn't care if he hurt us or not. But Alexander didn't have that anger in his eyes. Inside his eyes was joy, he loved hurting me because that's what he seemed to like doing. My father liked hurting us, but not to the extent Alexander did. Alexander seemed to live for it.
I then remembered something that he had said while he was beating me last night. He said something about doing the same thing he was doing to me towards Sami. He did say our orange haired ally, it had to be Sami that he was talking about, nobody else had orange hair. He also said something her body. 'How'd you like the body?' That's what he said. I'm sure he said that.
That made me wonder what he was talking about, what body? I never saw her body, I only saw her picture flash in the sky the day she died. It made me think of what he said. How could I see a body that had disappeared? The Capital hovercrafts pick up the bodies of the dead when they die, and if people aren't near them. So how could I have seen her? It made me think of the morning that Sami's cannon fired to tell us that she was dead. Aerin and I went looking to see if we could find her, and we couldn't. Aerin said that he hadn't found anything that morning, and neither did I. It made me confused about the whole situation. There was no body near our camp. He was lying, if there was a body I would have known about it, how could you miss a body near your own camp? You'd have to be blind to not notice.
But if what that albino had told the truth and thought that I had seen Sami's body? If he thought that, then the body would have needed to be near our camp, and somewhere where he thought we'd be able to see it without us noticing him. Come to think of it, Aerin took a little long when he went behind that tree. That made me wonder.
As soon as I thought about that, it wouldn't stop picking at me that Aerin had lied to me about not finding Sami. So I decided to ask. I had to find out what had happened, and asking would be the first step to finding out who was right. "You found Sami's body." I told him changing the subject of which we were previously talking about. It also wasn't a question.
Aerin seem a little stunned by that statement. It was like he didn't expect me to say it. I now knew that he had found her dead body, everything was beginning to click into place.
A moment of silence came between us and the only only sound you could hear was the rain falling on the forest foliage and the sounds of birds chirping in the distance.
I said again "you found Sami's body didn't you. That day when she died and you said that you didn't find anything. You found her didn't you."
More silence came as Aerin seemed to absorb what I had said. It was like he didn't want to say anything to me. That just made me know that he had found her even more. And that made me more then a little upset.
Finally, I heard him take a deep sigh.
"Yes," he said with sadness in his voice. "I did find her. But-" I didn't want to hear anymore.
"No buts about it," I said to him angrily "you knew she was dead, and you didn't tell me." My anger started to build up as I thought of how Aerin had deceived me into thinking that Sami was still alive for that entire day. Instead of telling me that she had died, he kept my hopes up about her being alive and returning to us. "You lied to me." I told him harshly. "I should have been told the truth instead of you keeping my hopes up before shattering them."
All that day, I kept my hopes up that that cannon wasn't Sami's, I kept on hoping that she was out in the arena somewhere and was only lost and looking for us. But that wasn't the case. She was neither lost nor gathering food or looking for it. She was dead, and Aerin knew it.
"I didn't want you to see her the way she was," Aerin told me with sadness still in his voice. "The way she was, mutilated." That seemed like a sorry excuse to me.
"I've seen mutilated people before," Everyday you were surrounded by death back in District Eleven, you simply couldn't live there without seeing some sort of death. I've seen the peacekeepers sadistically whip the flesh off of people's backs until the whites of their spines showed. I've seen them twist limbs until they broke into angles that were normally humanly impossible. I've seen them paint class room walls with student and teacher brains alike after shooting them in the head with a bullet. Of course, the bullet through the head is the ending act after they do some horrific thing to them first. The bullet to the head is almost a mercy kill at that point. "I can stand it." You have to be able to stand it, otherwise you can't live in the district. I've seen people go insane from seeing all that death and touchier before killing themselves in various ways. Most choose one of two options. One is to slice your own throat with a bladed weapon, or fall from a high branch and crack your head open. Either one works if your brave enough to do the deed.
"That still doesn't mean that you should hear about it," Aerin said. "Or see it." I heard him say quietly.
Before I could say anything, I heard Aerin say "I'm sorry that I lied to you. I just didn't want you to see her like she was, we get enough of that at home. And I was just doing what I thought was best for you."
What was best for me. Did he really mean that? "Look," Aerin said "from now on, I won't lie to you about anything, how's that?" I felt happy hearing those two things. Maybe he was doing what he thought was the best for me, though I still didn't like that he kept Sami's death a secret.
"Sure," I told him knowing that he was just doing what he thought was the best thing to do in his opinion. "Sure, just don't lie to me anymore."
Mid-morning.
District Eight's December Juliet "Ember" Varen's POV
Breathe in. Breathe out. Could I do this? I breathed in, slowly, calmly. The better question to ask right now though was would I do it? Breathe out gently. My target was in front of me with it's head turned away from me. It wasn't even looking at me, and hopefully it wouldn't turn around to face me. I didn't want that, even with the rest of the advantages that I had.
Inhale. The thick jungle foliage helped hide my body from it if it did happen to look at me. Though I would prefer that it didn't turn around to look at me. I also stayed perfectly still, only moving to breathe in and out as I debated wither I could do the task ahead of me or not. The rain also deluded my scent which thankfully was heading away from the creature ahead of me. So all and all, I don't think I could be discovered easily. But was I hidden good enough?
Breathe out. In my opinion, I was hidden perfectly. I was in the perfect spot to attack, but all this would be useless if I didn't attack. The perfect spot to plan an assault, but it wouldn't be a place of assault if I didn't attack.
How could I do this? I could maybe throw a knife at it's eye for an instant death, but did I have the skill to hit it in the eye? I could go for the side of the skull, but did I have the strength to penetrate the thick skull? Would a hit to the side be enough? Would three throwing knives to the side be good enough to bring it down? I don't know, maybe I should just throw a throwing knife at my target before charging in with my nine inch kitchen knife. Would that be the best combat idea? If I wanted combat. Did I want to struggle with the boar?
Breathe in. The wind blew gently in my direction, so my scent wasn't heading towards it, I was safe from it smelling me. But at the same time, if I did throw one of my throwing knives, the wind would be a factor in where it hit, and I'd need to throw harder because the wind was blowing towards me. Would the wind blow my knife away from my target area? Was the wind strong enough? It didn't seem like it, but unexpected things did happen.
As I exhaled my breath again I reached back ever so slowly with my right hand and pulled out one of my throwing knives from the side of my backpack. I carefully pulled it out without making too much noise. Could the animal in front of me hear that I was pulling my knife out? If it did it didn't seem to take any interest in it. Good, I didn't want it running away. I needed it to live. For now. I didn't have any food left, and I couldn't find any thing that was edible where I was, like I had hoped. But that all changed after I found this brown furred animal in front of me.
I inhaled again when my throwing knife was out of the side of my backpack and was firmly in my hand. The wind gently brushed the jungle foliage around me which caused the animal to lift it's head up from time to time to inspect the environment around it. Every time it looked around it snorted from it's flattened snout while looking around before lowering it's head again to eat some of the grass on the ground. If things get bad I might have to eat grass. Is grass edible? It seemed safe enough, and the training instructor said that it was alright if it wasn't poisoned or anything. But was that true? What if all grass was harmful to humans but safe for animals? I've seen tributes eat grass before, but they were mixed with other food or mixed into soup. Did grass alone make people sick?
If I had a fire starter I could maybe make soup out of some of the various materials in the jungle. But until I do get a fire starter find some food other then that mushroom patch that I had found, and devoured, I'd have to settle on this animal's meat. But I'd have to cook the meat unless I wanted the meat raw, which I also didn't want. Maybe I'd learn to make a fire by rubbing two stick together or banging two rocks together.
I breathed out as I lifted my right hand up to get ready to throw the knife at the animal. I didn't really want to kill that animal, but I had to in order to continue living. But what if I couldn't do it? What if I decided that I didn't want to kill that animal? What if I made a sound and it got scared away? What if something happened and I couldn't kill it? Those thoughts rushed through my head as I arched my right hand behind my head, ready to throw the knife into the animal's flesh.
Breathe in. No, I had to kill it, I needed it's meat to survive. I had eaten all the bread and mushrooms that I had. As I said about raw meat, I could make a fire from maybe rubbing two sticks together, or finding a couple rocks and banging them together to create sparks, but it was hard to make a fire that way. Could I think of something else? Maybe later. That animal would provide me with food and maybe even a short coat. Yeah, I could make a short coat out of it's skin, I learned how to make clothes back home. After all, my mom did own a clothing store. I didn't make any clothes myself, but I did pay attention to what she had done with her sewing. The problem about making a coat right here and now though was that I didn't have a needle and thread. Actually, I don't think I need a needle and thread, I could just make it a one piece item.
As I breathed out I decided that I was going to kill the animal in front of me. But the task of doing it made me kind of uncomfortable, after all, I was killing another living thing. Watching the games showed me that the tributes in the arena didn't seem to care about killing animals, but they sometimes cared about the other humans they killed. Why was that? Was it because the other tributes were like them? Human? Was that it? Because we were both human?
Sweat. Or was it rain that rolled down my face as I debated wither I was going to do the deed of killing that animal. Maybe it was a mix of sweat and rain that ran down my face. Why did this have to be so hard?
I shut down my thoughts about killing another living being as I threw my arm forwards and let go of my knife at the right moment causing it to slice through the air and towards the animal's head. Ancestors, give me the strength and precision to carry out this deed. I wanted it to be quick and painless. One strike to the head and it'd be over. It wouldn't feel anything. And why should it? I wanted to live and I needed to kill that animal, but that doesn't mean that it should suffer.
The knife spun through the air as it traveled through the jungle air and rain and towards the animal before it struck it's target.
It wasn't a bulls eye, so the animal didn't die painlessly, in fact, it didn't die at all. I saw the knife sink into the side of it's neck before the four legged animal gave out a high pitched squeal of pain before it started to run away.
Oh crap! No! Don't run away! I need you! What had gone wrong? I quickly grabbed another throwing knife from the side of my backpack while getting up while at the same time running towards the injured animal. I ran towards the animal while turning the knife around so that I was holding the blade of the knife between my thumb and both my index and middle fingers.
I chased after the animal who was running a lot faster and agile then I was through this jungle of underbrush and obstacles. It darted through the jungle like it was nothing, unlike me, who was having trouble following the darn animal through obstacles that I needed to jump over, duck under, run around, and all around just try to keep it in my sights. I needed to stop it fast, before I lost track of it. I predicted where it was going to be in the next couple seconds before throwing my knife towards that area.
The knife spun towards that spot before it stabbed itself into the animal's left thigh. The fat but powerful animal crashed to the ground as it's leg gave way. The animal crashed into the ground with an almost human thud before it slid across the ground sending bits of dirt, twigs, grass, and other items into the air and creating a scar on the ground as it was sliding.
I was quickly catching up to the fallen animal, but would I make it in time? Would it stay down long enough? It's high pitched squealing made me want to make stop breathing. I didn't know wither it would attract the attention of some predator out there. Were their other predators out there? Were mutts worse then tributes? From what I've seen in previous games, maybe.
As the beast was thrashing around on the ground unable to get up, I leaped on the beast's body before pulling both my throwing knives out of it's body and stabbed it in the skull with both my weapons before it suddenly fell silent. It's body twitching a bit before it stopped moving all together.
I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that the deed was done. It hadn't gone that far, and I had managed to do it. I felt bad that I had to end it's life, and painfully too, but it had to be done.
As I stood the beast's center mass, I didn't know wither I was sweating or the rain was making me think I was sweating. Either way, I got a little run that wasn't very draining, but was still intense.
I breathed in and out to catch the air I had lost. This felt good, I had caught some food, but I also felt bad because I had to kill another living being. Sorry boar, but you had to die. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I had some food with me, you might not of had to meet your fate this way.
I twisted the blades before I pulled them out of the beast's body before I sharply flicked my wrists to clean the blades of my throwing knives causing the blood on my knives to splatter onto the ground around me.
Now was going to be another hard part. Killing the animal was a challenge, but now I was going to have to skin it, which was another challenge altogether. I was going to have to cut open the animal's stomach before removing it's organs.
The thought of removing the insides of this being reminded me of that District Twelve boy, Colin, before the bloodbath had started. The disturbing sight of his insides flying every which way before landing on the ground with there wet and sickening splats made me realize just how sick and disturbing this game really was. Colin was the first to die, but he sure wasn't going to be the last. Twenty two more were going to die after him. All meeting the same fate as him in different ways. It made me hate the games even more then I already had. And I didn't even think that was possible until I had seen death right in front of my own eyes. Seeing it on T.V and seeing it in front of you were two different things, you felt different seeing it happen in front of you, and I could smell the foul odor of his shattered body. No, being there was so much different then seeing it in comfort of your home or even your district. At home, you felt safe knowing that you were still there and not where they were. In the arena, I knew that I could easily end up just like him. Dead.
I didn't want to die. The thing about that was, the rest of the tributes here didn't want to die either, we were all in the same dangerous situation, and out of the seven tributes that have died, I bet six of them didn't go down without a fight.
That was a problem for me, fighting. I wasn't a fighter. Never was. How am I supposed to go against the other tributes? Especially the careers. There was no way that I could go against them in a fair fight. But then again, nothing's ever fair in the arena. I could hide until there's only two of us left before throwing a knife into their back. But would I make it that far? And if I did, would I be able to kill that person? I don't know. I really don't know.
I put the throwing knife in my left hand into one of the backpack holsters as I heard the sound of jungle foliage crashing and snapping to my right. I quickly looked in the direction of where the sound was coming from to see that a part of the jungle was being destroyed. And even worse, it was close.
How could I have not noticed it? What was coming through that jungle? A tribute? A mutt? Whatever it was it seemed like it was huge. That scared me. It was big and unknown and close.
I didn't even have time to turn around and run away from when the figure crashed from the jungle greens.
I turned away as quickly as I could, but I saw what had crashed through the jungle. I recognized him. He was that guy my father had been keeping under guard. That District Three giant that called himself Tharizdun. When I had last seen him, he had blood running down from his mouth. That was really scary, because that meant that he had possibly killed someone before the games even started. But who? All the other tributes had made it into the arena perfectly fine. So who had he killed? His escort? His stylist? One of the peacekeepers that were guarding him? My father? No. He couldn't have killed one of the peacekeepers, they had weapons, they had guns, they could have easily killed him if he posed a threat to them.
Whoever he had hurt before he was going to do same to me. So I turned around and ran. I ran as fast as I could to get away from this murderous giant.
My legs gave a slow start and I could feel that he was rapidly gaining on me. But as soon as I started building momentum I was managing to stay away from him. I looked behind me to see that he was nearly twenty feet away. He was so close. So dangerously close to me, and it only intensified my fear.
I ran as fast as I could, but as always, I couldn't run fast enough. I had to force myself to run faster. But it was easier said then done to force yourself to sprint faster that you could normally make yourself move. But I tried anyway. I had to try. I had to do it. I pushed myself to move faster. I made my legs work harder. I gritted my teeth and did it.
I ran through the rough and tangled jungle greens and underbrush while avoiding low hanging vines, moss covered rocks, tree roots and other obstacles in my way. It was hard work, it wasn't easy to avoid everything. And I didn't. I had to run through some vines that snapped as my body forced my way through. I felt tips of branches cut across my cheeks. My shoulders scraped across tree trunks. Things on the lower level cut across my calves as I ran through them. I didn't care though, I hardly noticed the tiny little pricks that cut me as I ran away from a monster that was trying to kill me. The only reason I even noticed them was because I knew that I had scraped them.
I looked behind me for a split second to see that he was a little less then fifteen feet away from me. He was way too close for comfort. And from what I saw from that split second look, he wasn't even trying to avoid the obstacles in front of him. He was crashing through them and didn't seem to feel any sort of pain what so ever. Not only that, but he didn't even seem to slow down as he ripped his way through. It was scary. But he added the fear factor with that flash of steel he was swinging around. This was too much too fast.
I continued to run through the jungle and avoided anything in my path as I heard his heavy footsteps crashing through everything in his path.
Through the foliage ahead of me, I noticed a fallen log ahead of me. It wasn't too big, so I could possibly jump over it. I didn't see any other way to go. Would it be better to change course? Or would it be better to just keep going forward?
I didn't even have time to think as I felt my body getting ready to jump over the log, that was bigger then I thought it was. It was taller then I thought it had been, and it startled me.
My body started to slow down on instinct, but I was still moving forwards, and I attempted to jump the log.
I wasn't traveling fast enough as I leaped up and tried to get over the fallen log, only to get stuck halfway over the top. Crap! This wasn't good! There was a psychopath behind me and rapidly gaining with every millisecond. Get over Ember! Get over!
With a mixture of fear and determination I clawed the log with my hands and kicked with my feet to get over the obstacle in my way. I didn't want it to end like this. Not like this. Not by a man that was so dangerous that my father and four other peacekeepers had to guard him until it was his time to get into the arena. I saw how he looked at the young girls when we were in the training center. He looked at us like we were objects to him. Objects that he took an extreme interests him. And right now, I was his next target. His next victim.
Whatever he was planning on doing to me and the other girls I didn't want to know. That's why I desperately clawed my way over the log to escape the monster behind me.
My body rapidly inched forward as clawed forward as my fear continued to grow at a startling rate. With ever passing millisecond I felt as if I was in infinity more danger then the last. I felt my heart start to beat at an alarming rate. I felt my breathing get so much heavier. I felt a mixture of ice water and energy course through my veins as I crossed the last few scraps before jumping off the log.
Just as I jumped off the log I felt a gush of wind hit my back at almost point blank range. He had almost grabbed me! That made me run away even faster then I had thought was possible for me. Running was never my strong suit, but right now, I was running faster then I ever had in my entire life, and it was making my body travel awkwardly. My arms were flailing around. My back was arching forwards. My feet were off balance as I felt myself stumbling forwards with speed I never experienced before.
Never feeling this awkward with my body caused me to be unbalanced before I fell to the ground at great speed. My feet left the ground as the front of my body traveled quickly to the ground. I saw the ground nearing towards me as I placed my hands in front of me to stop my face from hitting the ground, and felt a tingle rip across my palms as they slide across the rough ground before my right shoulder roughly hit the ground before the entire right side of my body hit the ground and started to slide. Pain ripped across the right side of my body as it continued to slide. But surprisingly, the pain was more of a tiny sting then actual pain. Why? Why was that happening? Was I too scared to feel pain?
I couldn't think much as I looked behind me to see District Three's Tharizdun easily jump over the fallen log I had so much trouble getting over.
I got to my feet as fast as I could, but I saw the world spin and tumble as pain erupted in my stomach. Did he catch up? He had done it so quickly. I had been too slow. No. No. I wasn't going to die. Not now.
Remembering that I was still holding the throwing knife in my right hand I made my body stop rolling and faced my enemy.
My vision was blurred and everything was swimming around me. It was like I was underwater, nothing in my vision was fully clear, but I could still see some things through my hazy vision.
I looked for my enemy. I was going to get him with this knife. He wasn't like the animal that I had struggled to kill, he was a monster. A complete monster. He needed to be stopped. If there was one person that I knew deserved to die it was him. I wouldn't have killed anyone else so willingly, not even the careers who people also deem as monsters. But this guy was different, even though the careers killed other tributes during the bloodbath, this guy was worse.
I now remembered something that I heard Nessa Johnson say to Max Starling. If we ever see Tharizdun, we run, we run as fast as we can and don't look back. If he catches me, I'll have to suffer his touchier before dying a painful death. Her voice was nothing but fear as she told Max what to do if they ever meet him.
I don't know what he did, but I knew that it was bad if that little twelve year old girl was that afraid of him. But this was going to end now.
I arched my right arm back quickly before I threw the knife at him. I saw the blur that was my knife spin through the air towards the giant before the knife drove itself into his stomach. I had missed him! I had missed the spot I had been aiming for!
The next thing I knew, I saw a figure holding a mace above me.
As a reflex, I rolled my body away from the mace as I heard the whoosh of the solid bludgeoning weapon drive downwards before smashing into the ground beside me. The blow was so powerful I swear that I felt the full force of the vibration where it had hit the ground, even though I was away from where it had directly hit.
I felt the air leave my body in pure shock.
I wanted to get away from him. I really wanted to get away from him.
I didn't even get to try and get up before I felt a solid metal object smash into the left side of my body at almost the same time my body left the ground. I didn't even know what had happened as the world blurred even more and the world started to spin round and round as my entire body started to feel as if it was being hit every half second. I felt my body start to roll down an angled hill. I didn't try to stop myself from rolling down the hill, I was too shocked to do anything.
Suddenly, my body stopped moving and I recovered from some of my shock. I still couldn't think straight, my world was still a blur, and I could feel that my body was acting strangely, but I did know that I needed to get out of here. But that was impossible, how could I escape from this monster who was most likely running down that hill I rolled down as I spoke? How could I possibly get away from him after tumbling down a hill that was who knows how high? How was it that I didn't feel that much pain even though I had been hit in the side with a mace? Or after I tumbled down a hill? How was this possible? What was happening to me?
Don't think about that Ember, just get out of here!
Even though I was confused about the situation and was scared out of my mind I did what my brain told me to do and got up as quickly as I possibly could before I started to sprint in the general direction that was away from the hill I fell down. It was hard to tell which way was which when your head was swimming in a waves of black, white, and grey.
It was hard for me to even more my feet forward. It was like my body wanted to collapse, but at the same time, it wouldn't allow itself to do that. I wasn't tired, but my body seemed to have mixed feelings within itself.
I stumbled and wobbled around till I couldn't move anymore. Did I get away from him? Why did I feel this way? I never felt this way in my life before. What was this? I had mixed feelings of feeling tired, but at the same time I didn't. I felt a little hurt, even though I had taken in who knows what. Was I breathing heavily? Was I breathing at all? I don't know, I couldn't even feel anything I was doing anymore as my vision grew weaker and weaker.
I felt my feet lose their strength as my entire body started to shut down. I didn't fight it, I let my body do what it wanted as I started to feel tired myself. What was this? One moment I wasn't tired, the next moment I felt as if I going to go to sleep for the rest of the day. I let my knees hit the ground before my body collapsed on the ground and let my face bury itself in the damp grass and my vision rapidly turned black.
As I felt my body weaken, my mind told me to do two things before I blacked out, get off the underbrush so that I would be covered by them, and cover yourself with whatever was on the ground around you. I didn't want to do it, I was so tired. But I did it anyway, because the back of my mind was telling me that if I didn't do exactly what it said, I was going to die. So I did what it told me to do, I gathered my strength and forced myself to lift my back up before grabbing the underbrush and getting it away from my body. I did the same with my legs and my head, even though they felt like balls of lead.
When I had gotten the underbrush off the back of my body, I weakly grabbed handfuls of the earth before placing it on top of my body as I began to black out.
I dropped the earth I grabbed on my chest, on my stomach, on my legs. I then started to smear the damp earth across my face and arms before spreading it across my entire body. Would this even help? Did making the underbrush rise again help cover me? Did it even rise? Would my half assed camouflage attempt even make a difference right now?
I was so tired. How far had I ran?
There were a lot of things that I didn't understand right now, but I knew a few thing for sure, I've never felt so scared, or ran so hard, or felt this way in my entire life.
District Three's Zap "Tharizdun" Philistone's POV
Where the fuck is she!? I had been chasing the little bitch before I had hit her across the body with my mace. Her body escaped the ground before suddenly falling into oblivion. How could this have happened? How could she have disappeared like that?
I continued to swing my mace at everything that she could be hiding in. I swung it at the trees, maybe the trees were hollow. I kicked the ground. Maybe she was hiding in there. I destroyed logs, I turned over rocks, I looked everywhere a little fifteen year old girl could possibly go into. And found nothing.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Where was she!? I smashed at another tree when I noticed that the ground ahead of me was not even close to being level. I looked some more and saw that I was standing on top of a hill. I looked down some more to see that there was a bottom of the hill. Maybe this is where she went, she couldn't have gotten far.
I ran down the hill and came to the bottom to discover nothing. Nothing but the green jungle in front of me. Where the fuck was she? She has to be around here somewhere, that little bitch couldn't have gotten far. Not with the way she ran.
I had seen girls run away from me before, they tried to escape me, but they couldn't out run me, they couldn't outrun a god. Try as they might they couldn't escape from me. Nobody could escape me. But then someone did, a little bitch squealed on me before those bastard peacekeepers threw me into asylum. I should have seen it coming, she was acting weird before she escaped. I thought she was scared, I never thought that she was going to try and escape.
That girl escaped by climbing into one of the body bags that was meant for the dead. I don't know how I missed it. How I missed that someone was alive. I thought she was dead. I should have known better, I hadn't picked a piece of her body to rip out before killing her. Her nose. I was going to rip out her nose because she had said that she couldn't stand the smell of her prison. She wouldn't of needed to smell it anymore without her nose.
But now another had escaped me. Another had avoided her fate. Another had escaped my judgment. Fuck! This girl was nothing special in terms of running away, there were lots of other females that ran faster then her, and I caught them. What was so different about this situation?
I smashed the trees in front of me with my mace and heard the bark shatter off the solid trunks. She had to be hitting somewhere! I kicked at the greens to find her if she was hiding in the tall ferns. I smashed anything that was hollow with my mace. She had to be around here somewhere!
I placed the mace back on my back before I pulled out the machete that hung at my hip and started to slice through the overhanging obstacles to see if she was hiding behind any of those annoying little things. I sliced through all the hanging greens in front of me, and found nothing. I continued to search through the jungle, and found nothing.
What the fuck!? How could this girl escape me? How could she escape me?
I shouted out in anger thinking of how this girl was making a fool out of me. I got some revenge off of her father by cutting his eyes out with my teeth, but I wanted more. I wanted to add this girl to my legacy and let her father suffer.
Varen. I will get both of them. I will get the daughter. And it'll finish off the father. I'll get my revenge on both of them. I swear it, I will get my revenge.
I pulled the knife she had thrown into my stomach and watched the blood splash out as the blade came out of my body. She thought she could kill me like that? She was wrong. Something like her could never kill me.
A/N: Well, as you can possibly tell, I don't think that I can update as fast as I've been in the past. Ah well.
So, what do you guys think of this chase scene?
Random questions: Which two tributes would you least want to be captured/attacked/encountered by (except for Tharizdun and Alexander) and why? And if you had to choose, which two tributes would you want as an ally and why.