Maxson Deloria- Swing Vote D6M
Gaius thought he was doing a really good job of pretending he wasn't dying inside. He was not. I wasn't even good with emotions. I'd always been prone to not even noticing someone was sad even if they weren't trying to hide it. Usually a more stoic guy like Gaius would be able to fool me without any effort. This wasn't a normal problem, though. Gaius had spent the last week or so slowly losing control of his body. The one thing that had been keeping him alive was the slender hope that Zibby might be able to help him. She had helped him, but not nearly enough. She'd saved him from death, but really she'd only saved him partially. Most of his legs- and parts of the rest of his body, wherever he happened to knock into something- was dead. He was living in a partially dead body and I couldn't imagine the metaphysical trauma of that, much less the mundane worries about his independence, his manhood, and his chances of survival in the arena.
"I think it will help a little," Todd said of the physical therapy textbooks he was leafing through. Clearly Todd was a doer. He hated seeing people in pain or upset and always thought there was some way to fix it. Maybe there was, but I wasn't sure. Gaius, for his part, didn't even stop staring at the wall to respond to Todd.
At the sound of a ceiling tile sliding sideways, Gaius jumped out of his chair. He almost fell on his stiff legs before he grabbed the edge of the table for support. I could see the fire in his eyes as he grabbed at the parachute. I glanced at Todd and he clearly saw it too.
Gaius tore open the box and his whole upper body sagged. He pasted on a smile as Todd and I looked inside.
"I should have known, from the weight," he said as I looked down at the sawed-off shotgun inside the box.
"Sweet! Let's see Fable and Jessie come at us when we have this!" Todd said, peeking at Gaius to see if he was cheering up.
"Yeah," Gaius said hollowly, and went back to staring at the wall.
"Maybe we can come up with a cool plan," I ventured. Maybe if we coaxed out Gaius' tactical skills he'd remember he still had a lot to offer.
"Maybe you two can," he said. "I shouldn't come, since, you know."
"It shouldn't take long to find a wheelchair," I said.
That finally got some expression from Gaius. "Wonderful," he said venomously. "Then you can push around the dead weight."
"You're not dead weight!" I protested. "But what we can do something with, is that some people will think you are."
Arielle Ermin- 28th Games D4F
My first arena was a tropical archipelago. Just the air itself was hot enough, but with the body armor and the amount of running I was doing, it was sweltering. I'd lain awake at night tossing around, trying to find a cooler spot and vowing I would never be this hot again once I was the Victor. This arena was a nice, cool office building temperature. It would have been, that was, if I wasn't wearing so many layers.
I didn't remember for sure what Diamond used, but I was pretty sure I remembered Wangari was at least okay with a bow and arrow. In this arena it was child's play to find horrible poisons to smear on weapons, so I had to assume that any arrow wound would be fatal. In response, I'd added some more questionable fashion choices to the body armor I'd gotten at the Bloodbath and the snazzy helmet usually used by kids with faulty skulls. My sleeves were stuffed with another pair of sleeves I'd cut off from a protective suit for whoever it was who did x-rays, and I had a matching set of x-ray suit pants to protect my legs. I wasn't sure it was enough to stop an arrow, but there was a chance, especially if the bow wasn't especially high-quality. On my hands I wore a pair of blue cut-resistant gloves, which in my opinion made me look a bit like a serial killer. If Wangari- and maybe Diamond- wanted to shoot me, they'd need to hit me right in the face.
I was checking behind the desk in the gerontology department waiting room when someone sniped me. I felt the tiny impact and guessed it was a dart that had hit me even before I saw it sticking out of the back of my upper arm. I was pretty sure Wangari didn't use darts, though of course anyone really could- they were pretty point-and-shoot. Finding the proper equipment to project them this long, though, implied sponsors, which slightly implied a Career. It just wasn't Fable and Jessie's style. I didn't think Flint would have enough sponsors. Tuesday used a spear. My best guess, then, was that it was Diamond lurking about thirty feet away around the corner of one of the hallways branching out from the waiting room.
Time to test out my acting skills, I thought. I had no idea what Diamond had coated his darts with, but if I didn't start dying in the next few seconds, he was going to shoot again. I pulled the dart out of my arm and then dropped it, trying to act like I was so surprised by the onset of the poison that I hadn't noticed I'd let go. But what are the symptoms? If I was poisoning someone, I'd want a poison that paralyzed people, so they couldn't come at me after I shot them. I faked a stumble, like my legs were going weak and I was struggling to stand. I started to pant like my lungs were seizing up. I coughed once, then chided myself for going overboard. I took out my sword and wheeled in a circle, looking for whoever it was who might have shocked me, though from the trajectory it was easy to pinpoint the hall Diamond must have been hiding in. I couldn't see him, so he must have been tucked around the corner out of sight. To help him know I was in fact dying, I threw in a couple of extra loud gasps. Finally, I fell to the ground. I "failed" to get up a few times and then lay still.
Diamond Stark- Res D1M
We trained so hard, we Careers. Years and years of honing our skills to near-superhuman levels, and all of it could come down in an instant to something impossible to prepare for. We all hated poisoners so much because they could bypass everything we did and kill us as easily as we killed outlier twelve-year-olds. I didn't take pride in it, really. I didn't think the Games were something to be proud of. Careers trained for this and had so many tools before we even came into the Games. I wasn't proud of killing a bunch of kids who were thinking of their mothers. It was a job to me. Businesses didn't give their competitors a "fair chance" or not sell something because they "hadn't earned it". I wanted to win. I would kill the others- especially the ones who had signed up for it- whichever way was easiest.
It was always eerie to see the death throes. I picked the fastest poisons I could, mostly out of expedience but also out of humanity. They just weren't as fast as in the movies, though. It must have taken Nene at least ninety seconds to die. I wasn't a scientist, but I didn't know how there couldn't be some sort of poison that killed you right when it hit the heart. Some sort of super potent curare, maybe? But it wasn't long before Arielle fell to her knees. She tried to stand but her arms gave out underneath her. She tried again as she lay on her side, but it was too late.
I didn't know what Arielle would have on her. A sword, of course. I wasn't sure if I'd take it or just bend it up past use for anyone else. She'd been part of the Career pack, so she probably had body armor, which was why I'd shot at her arm and not her torso. I might take her helmet, especially since she'd smeared something on it to cover what must have originally been fluorescent bright plastic. Maybe she had some other this or that that might be useful.
Sometimes I thought I should be more reverent about death. I'd just severed Arielle from this world and left a human-shaped husk in her place. Surely that had to mean something. As I bent over her, though, she didn't look any different than if she'd just been asleep. I'd take what I wanted and after I left a faceless Peacekeeper would take her away like nothing but garbage.
When Arielle lurched suddenly, I thought she was just seizing. I thought it was a coincidence that she'd hit my leg. I hit the ground hard, my cheek banging against the linoleum floor, and turned over to see her pulling her sword up across her body to stick into me. That was the thing about the Hunger Games. You could train all your life, and plan for everything you could imagine, but no matter what, it could be gone in a second.
I had four POVs planned but then I got lazy and went nyehhh
16th place: Diamond Stark (not Kai)- stabbed by Arielle
Diamond did really well for a canon foreigner. He was humble enough to stay low-profile until the numbers thinned and pragmatic enough to use poison. We're nearing the endgame, relatively speaking, and I have to get down to the very best of the best. Diamond IS really good and skills-wise could be best of the best, but other fan favorites pushed him aside. Maybe next time...