VIDEO FILE 10616991938171

TRANSCRIBER: INTERN ID 914205181402

Okay, so this piece of footage starts on the ninth day in the Games! Calder (D8) died about… six hours before this video starts? I'll double check that. But yeah, he got eliminated by those crazy hawks- I don't think the rain was helping either- and he's gone now. It's been raining all day so far, and the sun is just about to set. The two people in the footage are Katsuo (D1) and Amar (D1).

They're both walking across one of the cloud platforms, which is currently a stormy gray. Well, Amar is walking. Katsuo is doing this in-between, part-walking part-hovering thing with his jetpack, which looks very cool even though I know it's probably because of his leg injury. Amar is talking and Katsuo is mostly ignoring her. He has this look on his face that's hard to describe. Sort of distant, maybe, but also… I don't know. Sorry, I might have to come back to this. I know describing things is my job but this is hard to describe!

So they're walking and walk-hovering across one of the bigger platforms in the arena over in Quadrant IV. They're close to the edge and almost ready to fly to the next one. They've both got some dark brown streaks in their nice Games uniforms by now, and they're both a bit dingy. Also, since it's raining, they're both wet. That doesn't make Katsuo's jetpack stop working, though. Amar keeps talking. I'm gonna skip some of what she says here.

"I'm hoping the cannon from earlier was Tanith, but I don't know," she says. "That would be really lucky. I did get a good hit on her, though. So maybe someone can go after that and I'll have helped take her down. Maybe Venezio could do that, even. God, I wish Zayan had been smart enough to not be the one to charge in the back. I liked him so much more. I bet Tanith and Venezio tricked him, honestly, and they knew he wouldn't make it in that scenario. He was a nice guy, though, what a shame."

"He's better off dead," Katsuo mutters, stepping over a lump of cloud. Is that stuff really water, by the way? I don't think it can be, since people are walking on it, but I'm really curious. It's some sort of chemical thing, right? Because they've also slowly been getting darker and darker. And then you put water in them so they could rain? Do you think Ms. Tychon would tell me more about it if I asked?

"You said that about Kamari, too," Amar says.

"I mean it about both."

She gives him a side-eye. "Grumpy today."

"Shut up," he replies.

"Is it the rain? I'm glad our clothes are waterproof, honestly."

"Would you stop talking?"

She slows down a little. "Are you okay?"

"I told you to stop talking," he snaps.

Amar raises her eyebrows. "I wasn't doing anything, Kat-"

His expression is a lot easier to read now. He's definitely angry. "You weren't doing anything. Of course. You've never done anything, right?"

She frowns. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm fucking tired," he says, "of you playing innocent all the time. Would you drop the fucking act already?"

She gives him a long look. "There's no act," she tells him.

He scoffs. "I knew you'd say that."

"What are you even mad about right now?" Amar asks him, starting to lose some of her patience.

"You!"

"Then what did I do?"

"You've been bullshitting me all along," Katsuo says. "Right from the beginning."

She looks hurt. "Are you serious?"

"Of course I'm fucking serious!"

"Is this about me being nice to you again? Is that really your problem?" she asks.

"You're not nice," he says, his voice starting to get louder. "You're the biggest liar I've ever met."

"You think I was lying?" she asks. She crosses her arms. "About what?"

"Everything," he says. "Carina. Your parents. Me. And I've played along with it for long enough, don't you think? Aren't you tired of pretending all the time? It's been over two weeks now, and I know you can't fucking wait until you can get rid of me and forget I ever existed."

"I didn't lie," she insists. "I told you that shit because- because you're my friend, Katsuo-"

"You keep saying that but you know it's not true-" he interrupts, but Amar isn't done talking.

"-and I thought we were getting along well and you were in a lot of pain and I was trying to help you. I took care of your leg, remember! And there's no sign of infection! Don't you think there would be something wrong with it by now if I was messing with you?"

He taps the side of his forehead. "You are. You want me to rely on you, and come to you with all my cuts and bruises and hurt feelings, but too fucking bad, because I won't, because I know you're full of it and you were just using me all along-"

"It's not like that and you know it-"

"You're trying to take advantage of me, because you think I'm weak, but I won't let you-"

"It's not taking advantage of you to care about you, Katsuo!" she shouts. "Maybe it's not even about you, have you considered that? I know you think everyone is fucking selfish all the time, but all I wanted was a fucking friend. Maybe that's selfish, but I confided in you, too, and you don't get to throw that back in my face-"

"No, you just made me think that you did, so that you could make me look-"

"I didn't make you do anything!" Amar interrupts. "I didn't force you to tell me anything! You told me of your own free will-"

"You manipulated me!" Katsuo responds. "I can't believe you're trying to pretend like you still care even now, when you've already been caught- I should've trusted myself the night before the Games, when you tried this shit on me in the stairwell."

"I don't know what your issue is, but that's not what happened and you know it. And you're not gonna gaslight me into thinking-"

Before she can say anything else, Katsuo flicks his wrist, and a throwing star appears in Amar's already wounded shoulder. She cries out, stumbling back and reaching for her ax, while Katsuo rises into the air and out of her reach.

"I told you to stop talking," he shouts at her. "Do you ever stop talking?"

She points her ax at him. "What changed?" she calls back. Rain glints on the sharp metal, running down her arm as she stares up at him. The sun is setting behind her, the sky shifting from warm oranges and yellows to gray. The Gamemakers really went all-out with the camera work this year.

Across from her, Katsuo hovers, flipping another throwing star between his fingers and sneering at her. "I stopped being distracted by your bullshit," he answers. He feints left before throwing another star at her, underhand.

Amar sidesteps and blocks it with her ax. She seems like she's trying to get a read on him. "What about me is so hard to believe?"

Katsuo responds by throwing two more stars at her. One lands in her other shoulder while the other grazes her side. Both draw blood, and she cries out again. As she's distracted, Katsuo pulls out a knife and flies right at her, bringing his good foot down on her hand. There's an audible cracking noise, and Amar shrieks, but somehow she holds on to the ax and swings it around at Katsuo, who just barely manages to dance up and out of the way.

As she finishes her swing, he reaches down and slashes at her fingers, dragging the blade down her hand, and this is enough to make her drop the ax. She lets go of it and brings her other hand around in a fist, punching Katsuo in the face. His head snaps back, and as she goes to knee him in the gut, he grabs her by the throat and squeezes. She immediately starts choking, still punching and kicking at him, but I think Katsuo caught her by surprise here. He's also higher than her, because he hasn't stopped flying, so he's hard for her to reach.

As she hits him, he takes her wild blows without flinching. She changes tactics and starts clawing at his fingers. It's still raining, and I would've thought that would make it hard for Katsuo to hold on, but it's also making it harder for Amar to get a grip on his hands.

"I told you to shut up," he sneers.

Amar's eyes are big and panicky. She looks afraid of him.

Quickly, he breaks his grip to grab the knife again, dragging it down her jetpack. She starts fighting him harder as she figures out what he's about to do, and she manages to kick his injured leg. Luckily for Katsuo, he's hovering, and he manages to stay upright, but he screams. And the noise the dagger is making against Amar's jetpack is absolutely awful. He's completely mangling it.

Then he presses the dagger to Amar's throat, forcing her head up, and she finally goes still.

"No more from you," he hisses.

The rain is coming down hard now, making their clothes stick to their bodies. There's a lot of it dripping down Amar's face as she looks up at him. There's some dripping down Katsuo's face, too. All around them, the sky is getting darker and darker, and the wind is picking up.

"You're not my friend," he tells her. "You don't fucking know me. You were nothing more than a tool."

I don't think the water on Amar's face is just rain anymore. Her eyes are shining too bright for it to only be rain.

"I don't care about you, and you can't make me," Katsuo says. "None of it was enough to make me do more than tolerate you. And that was only because you were useful to me."

He presses the dagger blade into her throat a little harder. A red line appears right where he's pressing it, and the rain on her throat starts to run red. I can tell she's having a hard time trying not to choke.

"I am not weak. I am not manipulated. I am not your fucking friend," he tells her.

For a moment, he looks like he's going to slash her throat. He presses it against her throat even harder, and she's clearly crying, trying to tell him something. But Katsuo's not listening.

He stabs the knife into her jetpack one more time, then kicks her in the chest. He kicks her so hard that she falls over the edge of their cloud. Amar screams, reaching out for him. His hand twitches- I've watched that moment three times, and I swear his hand twitches- but he doesn't take her hand. He lets her fall. She passes between clouds and disappears into the black.

Katsuo watches her fall. The sun falls beneath the sky just as she disappears, leaving him alone in the cold night rain. He's soaked in it- his hair, his clothes. His calf has started bleeding again, and the rain is already trying to wash away the blood of that and a few other scratches.

But there's a lot of rain on his face, too. And despite everything he just said, his eyes are even brighter than Amar's.

Then Amar's cannon fires, and Katsuo crumples, falling from the sky and into a heap on the edge of the cloud where Amar was just standing. He curls into a ball, and his shoulders are shaking, but his head is tucked under his arms and I can't see his face. It's raining too much now to tell if he's sobbing. But I'm pretty sure he is.

That's where the footage ends.