Day Fourteen, Afternoon

Alexandria Tarsus, District 1, 15

The bells seemed to stop ringing once I finally found the building in question. With a flick of my hand the large wooden doors which led into what was supposedly a church, or another religious place of worship, were forced open. My hair floated around me as I drifted in, surveying the room clearly whilst exerting a little mental energy into creating a field of force that protected me from some kind of ambush. Nothing could stop me; no blades, bullets or traps.

However, at the end of the large church I couldn't see anyone bar Mirane. She stood at the end of an altar, inspecting a jewel encrusted candelabra. When the doors closed behind me she turned around, shocked, grabbing onto her gun. Her grip on her weapon relaxed when she saw me.

"What brought you here?" I asked, floating above the tiled floor towards her.

"Same thing that brought you here," she said.

So the bells. Pullox's little summoning. "You know where he is?"

"No," Mirane said, gesturing towards a large stairway. "I checked upstairs and couldn't really find anything of interest. But if you look at the floor," her hand waved in a particular direction again. "You can see gaps in the tiles where I think there were pews or some kind of furniture or something. I think that this building was a lot more full that it was," she acknowledged: "Someone has moved everything... I dunno."

"Pullox is a schemer," I warned. "He doesn't win in a fair fight, not like you or I. He rigs fights so that they're not fair."

"I saw what he was capable of, back at the feast," Mirane said in a determined manner. Despite her words, I couldn't help but see a totally different Mirane than I did at the feast. She looked weary and beaten. And was it possible to lose so much weight in a day, or had her boney appearance just been a long term consequence of being deprived of food? I considered offering her some of mine, but refrained, because my mind had to be focused solely on stopping Pullox, not babying Mirane.

"He's my kill," I said. The church had been eerily silent other than Mirane and I's voices. The bells hadn't rang out once since I had entered. "We fight him together, but he's mine, okay?"

"I ain't complaining," Mirane said.

I dropped onto the floor beneath, my torn dress trailing behind me. I entered the game looking so pretty and glammed up, and as time went on my white dress grew darker with dirt. It was also covered in blood too - the blood of Lia, my closest friend, and Honora, my darkest enemy. At first I think it showed how much the Games had thrown me about and hurt me. I looked dishevelled. Now whenever I caught a brief glimpse of myself I couldn't help but see it as a transformation into a warrior.

"Then we find District Three and get the hell out of here..."

"District Three?" Mirane paused. "No fucking way."

"He's one of us-"

"One of us? He killed a fucking kid," I turned to face the adamant Eight girl, who looked pissed off to say the least. "I mean, I'm not sure if I agree with your reckless plan to begin with, but even if I did I wouldn't buddy up with a sociopath who teamed up with a child killer." He paused. "In fact, his ally died yesterday, and I bet my bottom credit if Pullox didn't kill Sebastian then the Three guy did. He tried to kill me," Mirane held out her hands and shook her head. "You can go with him. Start your stupid ass revolution. But if I see him the only thing I'm doing is shooting him."

I felt irritated that Mirane would disagree with me. After I had saved her life she was treating me with such a level of disrespect? I saw Mirane's expression calm slightly when my hair and the torn hem of my dress fell limply, no longer supported by my magic. I tried to internalise my anger and level my breathing. So she refused to team up with the Three boy because his ally killed a thirteen year old? Seriously?

"Don't be so sanctimonious," I chastised. "We've all been in the Hunger Games. We all know the evil Capitol makes us do evil things!"

Mirane glanced at me. There was a moment of silence, which somehow seemed to echo from the thick walls up to the ceiling. It rang in my ears.

"And you can't say the same thing about Honora?" Mirane said. "About Pullox?"

"That is completely different and you know it!" I shouted.

Mirane shook her head and raised her hands for a second time.

"You kill Pullox on your own," she said, moving towards the doorway quickly. Her dress shimmied behind her as she continued speaking: "You can call me sanctimonious as much as you want, but I'm not the one going on some idealistic killing spree just to feel all high and mighty," she continued huffing and complaining until she almost got to the doorways, which were five times her size. "You don't even need me to kill Pullox. You kill him, and then leave. We'll both be happy that way. That technically makes me Victor while you live happily ever after with your boyfriend who is just as evil as you are-"

She pulled on the door handles but found they were jammed. She then turned to face me.

"Open that door," she demanded, immediately knowing it was my doing. "I don't want to be near you or Pullox."

I found myself breathing heavily. Angry tears had welled up in my eyes for the millionth time. I just felt fed up. "You are either with me or against me," I almost panted. "There is no other way. You're with me or the Capitol."

"Then I'm with the Capitol," Mirane said. She had the audacity to be straight faced.

She saw the candelabra coming when it sped in her direction. Judging from the speed it travelled from the altar towards her, and its weight, I was certain it would've broken a bone. But her reflexes were sharp. The strong metal crashed into the door behind her, shaking it while Mirane tried to get to her feet. She was helpless to stop me from waving my arm again, jerking it towards me and sending her in my direction.

She slid across the floor, crying out and lying pathetically at my feet.

"You call the Three boy evil but then side with the Capitol?" I said calmly. "You're just as bad as Honora."

"At least when I took on Honora I took her on in a fair fight, not when she was crippled and powerless," Mirane's hair fell down her face and she looked down at me as I grabbed onto the hilt of my blade. I would finish her, and then find Pullox wherever he was. Paranoid, I glanced behind me to make sure that Pullox wasn't behind me. When he wasn't, I faced Mirane again. She continued talking: "And I even managed to beat her ass a little too. Maybe I'll even manage to strike you."

I grabbed my knife and slashed it towards Mirane, who jumped up and avoided it. When I started to wave my other arm Mirane grabbed it so hard I was sure it would bruise.

"No hocus pocus, witch bitch," she said, ramming her head abruptly into my nose. I screamed as I felt it smash, blood spraying down my face. The pain was so much that I was stunned. Playing on my weakness, Mirane rammed her head into my face twice more so than I fell onto the ground. I saw her reach for her gun in the corner of my vision and swung my hand, sending Mirane backwards again.

Even though she had caught me by surprise she stood no chance. I saw her splinter through a beam of wood that supported the stairway, smashing through it while the stairway groaned slightly, barely managing to support itself.

I shakily stood, mopping my bloody nose with my own sleeve. It hurt so much. I'd realised how easy my life had been - or my time in the Games had been - when the pain bothered me so much that I could barely focus. I crushed my palms together and Mirane was strung up by her throat, her legs dangling as I began to suffocate the life out of her. I would enjoy watching it fade out of her eyes. I would enjoy ending another Capitolian puppet.

"Now, now, ladies," a voice boomed from the floor above, dancing around the large ceilings. "This is all so petty. It's amusing, but I want to see a bit more oomph than that," I glanced upwards, my brief lapse of concentration making Mirane fall pathetically to the ground. "Now, I'm sure you all expected me to be here... But I remained silent because I didn't want to disturb you. But I couldn't have you killing each other, could I?"

The bells rang and I noticed that all the tiles, bar the ones I was standing on, had raised slightly. Only by a few inches or something, but it was noticeable.

"That's my job..." He laughed. "Now, if one of those tiles is pushed down on and triggered it will activate an explosive beneath that would blow you to smithereens," I glanced at Mirane, briefly considering using my powers to blow her up.

"Where are you, Pullox?" I screamed at the sky, deciding that he was the enemy. Maybe he wanted me to kill Mirane, or it was part of his plan. Pullox was going to be smart about this whole deal, which made me think of what I was doing that bit more. "Face me like a man."

"I could, but... Nah," I screamed in frustration which amused Pullox. "Now, lets see if you two can survive..."

A bell rang.

"... This..."

I was barely able to see them descend quickly from the ceiling, but they did. The swinging blades, supporting by wires, moved towards me. I saw Mirane quickly duck but I just raised my hands and flung them aside. They smashed through a large stain glassed window, no longer a threat.

"I should've known that was easy for you two," Pullox sighed. "I know, we can play a game... Lets see who can last the longest without falling on the explosives..."

Bells continuously rang in the background, only a difference. A smokescreen began to swirl around me and I heard the sound of something crackling, I think it was fire. He think he was trying to trip me up, to make me fall into his explosive trap and kill me. I knew that was extremely pathetic. I raised my hands and my body propelled through the air, while something beneath had caused the stairway to collapse loudly and trigger an even louder explosion.

My feet landed on the second floor when an even louder explosion followed the first one. I hoped it would've killed Mirane, but the silence of the cannons told me that she had either somehow got out of her spot of bother or she was barely clinging onto life, charred and disfigured. I desperately searched around for Pullox, storming around the corridors on the floor above in search for someone else. He was nowhere to be seen.

"Come on Lexie," Pullox said. "Do you think I'd hide away somewhere so obvious?"

"I can hear you clearly!" I snapped. And I could. His voice had clearly been heard on the second floor, and I could hear it much more prominently. The problem was that I couldn't figure out just where it was coming from.

"Want to hear a joke?"

"Get out here!" I snarled, swinging my hand so that a suspended corridor above was completely obliterated, triggering more large explosions from beneath. A flash of light lit up in the corner my eyes, coinciding with the booming sound.

"How many mutts does it take to kill a District One girl?"

I looked at the broken skeleton of what used to be a corridor that stretched before me. At first, I suspected Pullox's voice had been coming from there. But I could hear him behind me, and he clearly hadn't been killed in an explosion.

"... I guess we're just going to have to find out..."

A bell chimed in the distance for the millionth time. This time, it sounded particularly ominous.

I turned around just as flying beasts launched themselves at me. They crashed in to my chest, and had I not been able to fly I would've plummeted to my death. I hovered in the air as monstrous, flying creatures, barely the size of my hand, began to terrorise me. I felt them scratch and bite into me, pulling at my hair. At first I was too angered and shocked to deal with them, but with a wave of my hand I generated a field of force around my body.

They made giggling sounds as they were forced off me. I caught a glimpse of one of their faces, and despite their lack of size there was something terrifying about them. They looked human, albeit miniature and skeletal. Their eyes were white, though the pupils were red. They constantly had what looked like a psychotic grin on their faces. My blood was dripping from their teeth or hands.

Pushing out my hand, I generated energy which sent a few into the wall so harshly there was a snapping sound and they fell. There were still a dozen or so left, who desperately tried to gnash and bite at me but were unable to. I crushed my hand and watched as they were reduced to blood and bone in seconds, a pressure crushing down on them and ultimately ending their worthless lives.

When they fell onto the ground beneath, explosion after explosion followed. I even felt the heat from below rise to me as I flew.

... Was Pullox that desperate? He thought little fairies would be enough to defeat me?

A chill crept over me briefly, leaving goosebumps in its wake. I rubbed around my sides in an attempt to warm up and looked at the carnage below. What had once been a church was now a bomb site - literally. I could only see bits of stone and burnt wooden debris, with no sign of Mirane. Whatever Pullox had done, he wasn't up here. But I had a feeling he'd soon be down below.

Mirane Saffell, District 8, 17

I had no idea how I was still alive. Despite avoiding explosion after explosion I still had burns that crept up my arms and legs. They hurt like hell, but I think they were minor.

I didn't want to throw my backpack aside, especially because it was filled with tokens that invoked nostalgia, but it was the only way I thought I could survive. The weight of it triggered an explosion which had created a crater in the floor not long besides me. I used that as refuge, jumping into it and curling up into a ball. I didn't know what Lexie was doing on the floor above, but I heard Pullox taunting her, I heard the commotion, I heard the fighting. After a scuffle of sorts there were more eruptions that sounded around the room...

And then there was silence.

"It's over, Pullox," I heard Lexie say. She sounded close, though my ears were ringing and sore after the sound of the destruction around me. I leaned up slightly and could see her standing amongst the smoke, hovering above what few tiles remained. "None of your tricks can stop me. You've tried and you've failed."

"Lexie, Lexie..." A voice sounded. "You're right. And I would confront you head on, but that would be foolish of me, wouldn't it?" I saw Lexie searching around for him, desperate to end his life. "Sadly, I'm not with you."

"I will find you," Lexie screamed. "You're here! I can hear you! You can see me!"

"He has cameras," I told her. They were probably well hidden, and out of the range of any explosives. "And walkie talkies, or some kind of speaking device like a microphone."

"Don't show off Mirane," Pullox laughed. Lexie didn't seem to be listening to me.

"I've had enough of your Games," Lexie said. A bell rang in the distance as all the tiles which had raised earlier began to descend, no longer tripwired. I thought this was to lull us in a sense of false security, but when Lexie descended and stood on one there was no explosion. I glanced around and noted what used to be a church was now a ruin. Parts of the wall had been destroyed. The windows were all smashed. A cold had crept in. "You can't just hide, Pullox! Not from me! If you're going to defeat me you're going to have to show your cowardly face!"

"Do I really?"

There was an awkward silence. Lexie was panting now, almost dragging herself across the floor with blade in hand. There were no pillars standing, but she raised her hand and flung the remnants of them aside in the hope that Pullox would be hiding under them. I knew for a fact that he was elsewhere. And though I think Lexie was right in asserting that he had no traps left to stop either of us, I knew Pullox wasn't done.

"Y-Yes," Lexie snarled.

"All I have to do is wait, Lexie."

Lexie paused and turned around to me.

"What is he talking about?"

"I have no idea," I admitted.

"Well find out before I kill you too!"

"You said that fairies couldn't stop you, Lexie," Pullox laughed. "And though they were certainly no match for you in a fight, you didn't acknowledge that a bite or a scratch can have serious implications..." I saw Lexie's face drop a little bit. "A simple tear in the skin can become a deadly infection. A simple knock on the head can become a concussion that claims your life. Or maybe, just maybe, there are some mutts out there whose scratches or bites will be accompanied with a poison..."

Shit. I realised Lexie looked panicked, and though I was fighting her earlier I stood there and couldn't help but feel worried for her too. Lexie's breathing grew more ragged and she stumbled around, dropping to her knees and manually throwing rubble aside.

"What are you doing?" I said.

"I'm poisoned, he poisoned me," she wept. "W-Where's the antidote Pullox?"

"What an entitled generation you come from, Lexie," there was something genuinely sad in his tone. "Not every problem has a solution. Not every poison has an antidote..."

I realised how serious this was when I noticed the tinged blue tone of Lexie's skin. Her breath came out of her azure lips as frosted, condensed air as she desperately struggled to even stand. She began to cry, but each individual tear slowly froze on her face. I don't think Lexie realised how terrifying she looked from a distance as she slowly succumbed to the fast acting poison.

"Please Pullox," she paused. "Please... I have to stop the Capitol... I have to..."

She collapsed, but still somehow found the willpower to drag herself along the floor while I watched with horror. I had seen gorier deaths. Lexie didn't leak a drop of blood as she lay there, so it was much less brutal compared to Hadley, who had been gutted and hung from his own innards. And yet this was somehow much more horrifying. Lexie knew she was dying, and her level of distress contrasted so differently from her earlier tone.

And it was so slow. I could only watch for minutes as Lexie desperately clamoured around, her skin growing more and more blue until she began to resemble a barely animate, frozen statue.

"I'm sorry Lexie," Pullox said. "And I'm sorry that your family had to see this. But you tried to kill me. So I struck first," he paused. "I knew those mutts couldn't have killed you with force alone, but all I had to do is take you by surprise and open their cage when the time was right so that they could at least get just one bite. Ice faeries are a particularly brutal mutt. They may be fragile and easy to kill, but once they bite into you their venom is in your bloodstream. I'm unsure if you can even call it venom..." Lexie was still sobbing, and sounded like she was beginning to choke. "All it does is react with water to slowly freeze it. Doesn't sound like enough to kill you, but if you ever listened in a human biology class you'd know how much of us is made out of water..."

"Please, please," Lexie pleaded, holding her head and beginning to scream in pain.

"Our blood... Our innards... Our brain..." A pause. "There's water in our lungs. Even our eyes. And it's all slowly freezing."

"No... No," Lexie howled, beginning to collapse. "Mum... Dad... Oh god... Oh no..."

She was looking in my direction but as ice crept over her eyes I realised she had been blinded. Even her hair seemed to be slightly frozen. Lexie whimpered some more, curled up in the corner as she slowly froze from the inside out and faded into nothingness. Eventually, her cannon fired. I'd imagine the Gamemakers were cheering and celebrating now Lexie had been killed. And I got that. But it was somehow the saddest death I'd seen. It obviously didn't devastate me like Darius' did, but I realised I'd watched a kid slowly shift from a living human into an ice statue. The pain must have been excruciating. Even Pullox seemed silent once she had died, as if he were mournful. There was no proud speech

Did I agree with Lexie? No. Was I prepared to kill her? Yes. But when I looked at her corpse I realised she was just trying to good in the world. She was a sad, angry kid who tried to stop the villains. It was too bad she was just extreme and brutal in her methods. But extremity and brutality aside, she was just a teenager. She was once one of the younger and innocent kids in the arena, and you could see that in her corpse. She looked so pretty, like she was sleeping. Her frost covered skin gave her an ethereal look.

"I didn't want to do that," I heard Pullox say, his voice coming at me from all directions. He knew I was still here, that I had watched it all. "But I know you, like me, agreed that it was necessary in the scheme of things. It was a beautiful death, at least."

"I don't think she cares about that," I said. I glanced around and paused. "I know you're in the bell tower, Pullox."

Pullox Shimmers, District 1, 18

I stared out into the sky, surrounded by the many bells. The bells had been connected to numerous wires, though most of the wires had snapped when the bells had rung, thus triggering the multiple traps I had set along the church. One of those traps being the very trap that would unlock the ice faery's cage, ultimately leading to Lexie's death. On the handheld monitor before me I glanced at her dead body. It would've been the perfect kill had it not been for the numerous scratch and bite marks on her flesh and the broken nose Mirane had given her.

But other than that, she looked so untouched. Like she was sleeping. And with her dark hair and her small, heart shaped face I couldn't help but see her as so pretty in a child-like kind of way.

So why was I sad? Why did I feel like I had lost something? I barely knew Lexie. I may have liked her from the get go, but I didn't regret killing her at all... And yet there was this alien feeling inside me.

When I was ready I picked up my walkie talkie.

"How did you figure it out?" I asked Mirane.

"It wasn't hard," she said. I could hear her on the monitor. "Every time a bell rang I noticed something bad always happened. The bombs, the swinging blades, the smokescreen..." She paused. "The mutts." I couldn't help but admiring Mirane for surviving my trap. Lexie had used her powers to survive, which is what I had predicted. As I had also predicted, only the mutts' poison brought Lexie to death. But Mirane threw her backpack to trigger a tile and then hid within the hole the detonation created - something even I hadn't thought of. "Lexie didn't notice the door on the lower floor, but I did. You're using foreign devices, that's how you can see and hear us."

"Congratulations," I said emptily into the walkie talkie. "You figured my trap out and survived." I honestly didn't expect Mirane to come when I called her, I never anticipated that level of motivation. Turned out she was full of surprises. It almost made me glad that Lexie had stopped me from killing her - as I said, I liked a challenge. "You can leave now."

"It's over, Pullox," Mirane seemed to find the camera I was using. She looked into it. "Final three. We fight, and then I take on Trojan."

"There'll be no more fighting from here," I said, agitated and still thinking of Lexie. "Now get out. When I want to fight, I want to fight."

"We both know it doesn't work like that. Don't make me come up there."

I massaged my temples, exhaling. "Just because I have no more traps down there doesn't mean I don't have traps up here," I warned her honestly. "If you want to come up, it really will be the final two. Only it won't be you fighting Trojan." It was interesting - I hadn't seen Trojan once during the Games. He had done a great job of evading the Careers, and he hadn't made an appearance at the feast. I'd kept track of him days ago when I was the so called 'King of the Arena', so I knew what I was up against, but he had a much more mysterious aura than Mirane did.

I wonder if Mirane even knew that I knew so much about her. I knew about Darius, Hadley and Willow (whose death I found particularly sad). She knew I knew about Darius, but did she not stop to question how I knew? I wondered if I intimidated her.

"Fine," Mirane eventually said. "I'm going."

I was shocked to see that she kept true to her word. Watching her tentatively reach the church's large wooden doors, one unhinged from an explosion, she left. She had no idea just what I had in store for her tomorrow. A grin crept across my face as Mirane made her way out of my sight. It was a little disheartening that I hadn't managed to kill her, but my next little scheme would be bigger than ever, and I didn't have to focus on any superpowered brat.

Glancing at the monitor, I paid my last respects to Lexie. I knew deaths would sadden even me. Willow's did, because she reminded me of my sister. Lexie's death had a similar effect. Neither were the kindest or even smartest of the twenty-three other tributes, and yet an irrational part of me saw their losses as the greatest. Maybe it was because I saw a part of myself in both of them, moreso than any other tribute. Willow I barely interacted with, or cared for, but I remembered when Lexie first took to the stage. Our first conversation during the chariot rides. I even remembered the advice I gave her the night before the Games.

Now she was dead. It was a day I had expected to come earlier, and yet a day I hadn't imagined seeing. I was almost proud of her for growing so strong - even if it was an artificial strength, she pushed the boundaries. She killed Honora.

I collected my stuff and smashed through the window of the belltower. I anticipated a great escape just in case Lexie had survived my trap, and it wouldn't surprise me if Mirane waited by the front entrance of the church to ambush me. Smirking, I kicked a small bell beside me just to unleash the last trap; I hadn't lied to Mirane.

The ringing of the bell snapped a wire, which in turn caused a chemical spark that grew into a large flame. I grabbed my suitcase and quickly ensured the rest of my supplies were secure so that the rest of the Games would pass by smoothly. The inferno grew around me, threatening to consume me as I strapped a backpack to myself and preceded to jump out of the window and trigger a parachute device I had created. I glided down the air before my feet gently brushed across the grass beneath, the parachute's cloth pooling behind me.

This was going to be so much fun.

Thank you to everyone for reviewing again. I'm extremely busy atm (exams are looming), so it's very unlikely I'll be responding to you all but I'm reading and appreciating everything you have to say :)

~Toxic