District Eleven's Caritta Desin's POV
Adrian and his ugly partner had left us, avoiding a fight between us, but that didn't mean that we were out of danger. Because there were still two threats in front of us, and I didn't know wither they were going to attack us or leave us be. I hoped that they left us be, Selene didn't seem to be doing well, and a fight wouldn't make it any better.
But if it came to fighting, I'd take the District Three duo and kill them if it meant Selene getting away from them. Buy her some time at least.
"So what the hell do you two want?" I asked, not showing any fear. I couldn't show any fear, if I showed fear then they'd instantly jump me. I had learned that the hard way.
"Two less competitors might be a good start." The big guy said as he smiled.
Oh shit! They were planning on fighting and killing us.
Well, the big guy didn't have a weapon, and that little girl beside him didn't look like a fighter, so the odds were in our favor. That is, if Selene could at least defend herself, she didn't seem to be doing too good, but I hoped that she'd at least recovered a little.
"Do you really mean that?" I asked, getting ready to fight. "Because you don't even have a weapon and I do know how to fight." Which was almost completely true. He didn't have a weapon, but I didn't really know how to fight too well. Sure I had gotten into fights back home, but those fights never lasted long because the peacekeepers seem to patrol every inch of the district. And the fights with my parents were always one sided as my dad would always beat me down.
The only consolation was that I was good at taking hits and keep going.
"You don't have a weapon either." The brown skinned guy told me, still smiling confidently. "And I know how to fight as well." He then pounded his right fist into his open left palm. "And your ally doesn't look too well. Meanwhile, we're both perfectly healthy and capable of fighting."
"But can the bitch fight?" I challenged, looking at his partner holding an L shaped iron weapon. "Doesn't look like she can."
"Don't need to be a fighter when your opponent can barley stand up."
"Caritta." I heard Selene call out.
I looked over to her to see her throwing something at me.
I then caught the handle of the weapon she had tossed me and quickly glanced at it. It was a thick metal point attached to a wooden handle, like a large needle with a wooden grip.
I quickly turned back to the District Three pair and pointed my weapon at them.
"Thanks Selene." I said, not taking my eyes off the enemy. "Now, still think you can take us on?"
"Just need to dodge your strike before taking it right out of your hands." The male told me. He didn't seem the least bit discouraged. This was bad.
"Bring it on, I'll stab you in the throat and watch you drown in your own blood." I told him, trying to get him to back off.
"I'd like to see you try."
"Wait." The District Three girl cried out, causing the hallways to go silent, except for the soft humming of the lights around us. "We'll leave you alone." She told us. "We'll let you walk."
"What?" Her partner asked with a little confusion.
"Someone's smart." I said, mentally thanking her for discouraging a fight.
"If you don't stab us in the back." She continued.
"Sounds fair." Selene said. "We accept."
"Caia," The male said to his partner. "This is the perfect time to get rid of two powerful opponents. The gamemakers didn't kill her at the bloodbath for some reason, and she's one of the higher threats in this game." He said while pointing to me.
"Kendrick." The girl countered. "Those two have weapons. And They're both fighters. They both know that I'm no good at fighting. And even though one of them is sitting on their butt right now, all she needs to do is stab me once and it's over for me. I have a tire iron, which means that I'd have to bash her in the head until her head concaves."
Con...What?
"Then hand me the tire iron." The guy told her. "I'll take care of the two of them."
"And get injured in the process." The girl explained to him. "And if you do kill them both and live, we don't know how many more tributes there are still alive. For some reason, the cannons still haven't fired, so for all we know, there could still be twenty tributes still alive, of which four of them are trained careers still in the career pack. Could you take all of them on injured. And if I died, then what would you do? If you died, then what would I have to deal with?"
Wow, she really thought this over.
"Guess your right." Her partner sighed before looking back to me with disappointment. "See you later."
With that, the two of them started to go down the hallway to me left. In the direction they were originally going.
I watched them, thinking about how good of a time it was to stab them in the back. But, I didn't want to break the promise that Selene had told them.
After they were out of sight I turned back to Selene and helped her to her feet.
"You all right?" I asked.
"Getting better." She told me as I supported her, holding her arm right arm across my shoulder.
"Good." I told her. "You know, we make a pretty good team. Allies?"
"Sure. Allies." She told me. Which made me smile.
"Come on now, let's get out of here."
District Ten's Perla Freuff's POV
If there's anything that a medical center should contain it was drugs! Drugs of some kind, any kind! But here in this god damn arena, the medical doesn't have anything that I can use to get high!
I drank some of the liquid inside the first aid kits in an attempt to get a buzz off them, only to end up vomiting it all out and feeling the burn of my empty stomach.
Damn. Because of my withdraw, I was feeling the effect of not eating. How tired I was from a lack of sleep. Several days of being clean was a horrible feeling. It disrupted my sleep and it made foot taste like the bottom of someone's dirty boot.
Food. It hurt going down and it hurt coming back up. And it tasted like shit.
I scratched my arm again, digging my nails deeply into my skin so that I could take out whatever was crawling under my skin.
I hated that the Capitol prep team shaved my nails down to a normal length. Now I couldn't kill anyone with those former long nails of mine, and as of now, I couldn't take out the bugs that had somehow made their way into my body without major pain first. The only thing that helped me deal with the pain in the areas that I had pulled the bugs out of was the burning in my eyes.
The Capitol hadn't taken them away, and I was glad for that because they gave me something to focus on other then the bleeding holes in my arms, legs, and chest.
I scratched the area where the newest bug was crawling under, and continued to scratch until I started to feel my skin start to tear, then continued to scratch some more. Soon I started to feel the warm liquid start to wash over my fingers before I pulled out a piece of flesh from inside my arm.
The bug had been in there, I knew, because the itching was gone now, but so was a piece of my flesh.
Fuck my so called friends. Fuck Jillian and Markus and Laura for taking away Soony's gifts to me. They know that I need the drugs and yet they take them away from me.
That's all they've done, try to take away everything that matters to me. Take away the things that I need. They take what they want, and what they want is the drugs. They wanted it for themselves. I bet they're all high on those drugs right now as I'm suffering from hunger and withdraw.
I didn't feel good, and it was because of them. If I had the drugs, I'd be able to ignore those bugs crawling under my skin. I'd also be able to ignore my hunger and ignore how tired I was. But most of all, I wouldn't feel like a piece of shit how's head hurt. I felt weak and slow.
I hated them and these damn withdraw symptoms.
I threw the piece of blood flesh away before hearing it wetly hit the dirty floor.
"EEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWW."
A voice shouted from behind me, causing me to shout out in fright. Had they been behind me the whole time?
I turned around quickly, to see a big red haired boy with a sick look on his face. "Is that what I think it is? That's nasty." He said as he looked at the piece of flesh I had just thrown away.
Speaking of flesh. I was hungry. And there was a huge sack of meat right in front of me. Standing there as clueless as can be.
I smiled, thinking about how easy it would be to kill him then eat him. That would solve one of my problems. Even if his body would taste of sawdust. I was desperate. "So anyway, I'm just wondering if...Why are you looking at me like that?"
I then charged at him as he stupidly stared at me.
It was too easy to jump at him before bitting down into his flesh.
I was aiming for his neck, but he managed to hold out a hand in defense, causing me to sink my teeth into his palm instead.
He shouted in pain as I broke the surface of his palm an instant before I started to taste warm iron flaked liquid.
I pulled my head back, tearing his skin from his hand and landed back on my feet before I started to chew on the flesh I had just gotten.
It wasn't bad. It was like soft, chewy leather that was weak in taste, but the metallic blood made an okay sauce. It wasn't bad. Better then the shit I tried to eat in the Capitol.
The boy cried and looked at me in a mixture of fear and confusion. Much like some of the kids that I fought back home.
"I'm in chssssshhhhhharrrrrrrgggge hhhhhhere!" I shouted at the red haired boy, who was staring at his right palm in shock.
I'm the one in control here! Just like back home, I was a powerful figure, one that was feared and respected. That is, until they usually heard me talk, that's when they started to make fun of me. But that usually stopped once I beat the tar out of them. Didn't stop everyone though. There were still some people that said stuff about me, but most people knew that if they crossed me, they'd be in a world of hell.
Some, like the dealer back during the morning of the reapings, forgot what it was like to be someone lower on the leader chain. He was a lowly dealer, and I was the one that ranked higher then him. I was the one in control, not him.
It was just like right now. I was the one in control of the situation.
I needed food, wanted food, and this boy was going to give it to me, no questions asked. And if he wouldn't, well, he was going to give it to me one way or another.
"Your crazy!" The boy shouted before he turned around and started to run away from me.
"Get back hhhhhhhhherrrrrhhhhhhe you turrttthhhhhkeyyyyyy!" I shouted, knowing full well that he wasn't going to make fun of my speech problem, before I started to chase after him.
Damn. I hate food that runs away from me. Especially if it's fast food.
District Four's Dylan Drake's POV
Victory definitely had something to do with Jeremiah's death. She was too calm, too confident when I accused her of slaying our ally. It was like she was saying that she didn't need to vindicate herself. Instead, I was the one that had to prove her wrong.
She was never going to confess though. At least not yet. She still needed us, just as we needed her.
Right now, it was a symbiotic relationship between all of us. But I'm worried that this might turn into a parasitism relationship too early. Or worse, it turns into a amensalism relationship where Victory is the one unaffected and everyone else is the ones that are being destroyed.
Though her killing Jeremiah would be the beginning of such a relationship.
Still, it was only a matter of time before we all turned on each other. I just didn't want it to be this early in the game. We were supposed to lower the numbers significantly before we turned on each other.
Jen was oblivious to Victory's conspiracy, but Jenriko was someone who never took anything too seriously. Trusting people too easily and thinking that everything will work out in the end.
She'd most likely end up as Victory's last victim, because she'd never suspect Victory of doing such a thing.
The same thing happened during Creek's game when Vladimir Valentine killed two of his allies.
Creek didn't want to believe that her allies had been killed by one of their own when they were allied with each other, so she didn't think about it until after she won. When she watched the recap of the games, that's when she discovered that Vlad was the one that killed her two allies.
It's humorous to think that of Victory and Vlad being the same person. They don't care about their allies and do only what benefits them. Like a parasite.
I learned from Creek's game to not trust anyone. Not even your own allies. It's an excellent thing that I did, because this is turning into a copy of my sister's games with some fucked up rules added.
Victory might not look like it, but she was without a doubt, a psychopath, just like Vlad. They weren't the stereotypical ones that everyone thinks of, they didn't say how they were blood thirsty and wanted everyone to suffer while going on a killing spree. They weren't like that, but they were very much psychos, because they didn't care about anyone except themselves.
They had a lack of humanity and have difficult controlling certain emotions. They also use any kinds of methods to get their ways, probably having no sense of what's good or bad.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Victory lies and even believes her own lies, mutilated animals when she was younger, and while she may really be avenging her brother's death, she's doing it more out of a sense of not wanting to be bored then actually avenging her brother.
The training center produces lots of kids like her, they're called the ideal tributes because of their lack of empathy for other people. In fact, one of the first lessons you learn in the academy is to not think of another tribute as a person, but more of an object. A target. A training dummy that walks and talks.
Most kids never fully master it, a minor percentage do.
I didn't know Timber, but I have to admit, he was a living, breathing, human being, just like me. It really did suck that he had to die, but really, I'm going to have to kill more Timber's if I want to go home.
I don't enjoy killing people, but I was willing to do it.
Killing someone didn't give me a sense of victory over them, like the trainers told me that I'd have. Sure I felt that feeling when I beat someone at, say, spear throwing, or sparing, but I felt nothing like that when I pulled Timber's tongue through his windpipe.
I didn't show it, but I was sorry for him. Now that I killed someone for real, I saw that the games weren't as glorified as the propaganda films the academy showed us. Now I saw them as what they really were, propaganda.
Still, I wanted to win, and that would mean the death of more kids.
Damn. Why couldn't I feel more like those kids in the propaganda films?
Guess I wouldn't be human if I was.
A/N: Happy New Year's everyone!
Well, this chapter is short, but, I hope that this is more of a quality over quaintly thing (even if the quality isn't the best to begin with).
Damn guys, I'm really far behind on updating, reading, and reviewing fanfics. I've done one of them, I should be doing the other two later tonight.