Maxson Deloria- Swing Vote D6M
Just as Zibby had promised, we found an "AED" after just one turn down the hallway outside the dangerous chemicals room. Once I saw it, I remembered we'd passed it by on our way up. It was one of those boxes that dotted hallways all around the hospitals. There had been one in my school growing up. I'd always had a vague notion that it helped people having heart attacks or something, but I'd never had occasion to think about it past that.
"There it is!" Todd said, running ahead and leaving Gaius to lean even harder on me. I couldn't imagine how vulnerable he felt, out in this open hallway with no way to run if anyone came out. In his current condition, Tabitha would have been able to kill him. Not that she would, but the possibility couldn't be comforting. He looked up sharply at Todd's shout, not willing to stifle him but wishing he would be just a little more discreet.
"How does it work?" Gaius asked as we caught up.
Todd was looking at the instructions written in the back of the box as he held the paddles in his hand, looking like the world's weirdest doctor. "Looks like it's pretty idiot-proof. Just put on the paddles and hit the button. It'll stop when it's done."
"It won't fry his brain or anything?" I asked. Gaius gave me a look of consternation.
"Nope, it says it's safe," Todd said.
"Guys. What's the worst that could happen?" Gaius settled the debate.
Todd held the paddles up over Gaius' open shirt as he lay on the floor. He got a mischievous grin and we all knew he couldn't hold back. "Clear!"
Nothing happened.
"It didn't do anything," Todd said, looking at the paddle with confusion, like he might be able to see what was wrong.
"No kidding," Gaius said.
"What's wrong?" I asked, shouldering past Todd to look into the box with instructions. I skimmed over several irrelevant lines.
Will work on any subject with an elevated heart rate.
"You gotta get your heart rate up!" I said to Gaius. "It only works if your heart is up."
"Try running up and down the hall," Todd said as Gaius sat up.
"Try what now?" he said, looking at his legs.
"Try… flailing your arms really hard," I offered.
"Awww, that is so ridiculous," Gaius grumbled.
"We can do it with you," Todd offered gallantly.
"You'd do that for me?" he snarked.
"Friends stick together," Todd confirmed.
It was all on tape. No matter what happened, there was nationally-broadcast, permanently-archived footage of three young men flailing around like those inflatable balloon men I'd seen outside car dealerships. What I hadn't expected, though, was that it was honestly kind of exhilarating.
"All right, try now," Gaius panted, his hair ruffled from his exertion.
Todd caught his breath and raised the paddles. "Clear!"
Bzzzzzap!
Tuesday Erelle- Into Thin Air D2F
No matter where you went, some things were always the same. It was almost homey to realize I just plain had writer's block. I'd been staring at my computer for what felt like an hour. It wasn't uncommon for me to not be "feeling" it and for writing to be a chore, but usually I could muscle through it. The first draft of anything always sucked. But this was one of those times when there was just nothing there- nothing in my noggin. I might as well turn off the computer and find something else to do.
It's because you haven't done anything lately, I said, then immediately shut down that line of thought. Superstition or not, nobody was dumb enough to say the arena was boring. Heaven forbid you say it out loud. Something horrible was sure to follow.
Of course, I thought when I turned. I hadn't said the words, but I'd thought them, and in doing so I'd sealed my fate. It was Olivine in the doorway, already running through toward me. I stood so quickly I stumbled over the chair, which might have saved my life. As I fell backwards, barely grabbing my spear off the edge of the desk, Olivine's sword smashed down right where I'd been sitting.
Oh shoot. I wasn't… one of the stronger Careers. I'd been a bit of a stretch even in my original Games, and now I was against the biggest players in Games history. Wasn't Olivine the one who jumped through fire? I jumped backwards as she swung at me again. I took some stuttered steps backwards to increase the distance between us and get around a counter covered with some this and that. I reached out for the first thing I could get and grabbed an empty flask, which I threw at her head. It didn't shatter like I'd hoped, but it made her pause to bat it away.
"Oh!" I yelled without meaning to. I threw something else- an empty wire box this time- and scuttled for the door as Olivine again batted it away. She swiped at my back as I ran, slicing into my back and turning me around as I tried to evade her. That brought us face-to-face, forcing me into a fight.
As I raised my spear, Olivine shot out a foot and tripped me. I rolled to the side, guessing she'd try to stab me right when I hit. She did, and I was lucky enough that she didn't foresee my evasion. She brought her knee down into my stomach, dropping all her weight on it so my breath left me and I gasped in pain. I opened my eyes to see her knife coming down at my face. I grabbed her arm and we sat there for a moment like something from an action movie. I awkwardly brought up one leg between our two bodies and donkey-kicked her in the chest. She flew off me, clutching her chest with a scared expression after she landed. I tried to press the advantage and stab her, but she was too quick. She dodged out of the way and then yanked my spear, throwing me off-balance. I saw her going for her sword and really quickly stepped on the handle so she couldn't pick it up. She glared up at me with something like offense.
I wasn't sure what to do, so I kicked her. Her face snapped back and her hand pulled loose from the sword handle. I aimed my spear at her chest and started planning ahead for what to do when she dodged it. But she didn't. I looked at her dumbly as she reflexively grabbed the spear in her chest, remembering at the last second not to pull it out. It didn't matter, though. As she shifted her arm down the shaft, her eyes went wide and she fell like a switch had been flipped. I was trained enough to recognize it. The spear had been right up next to her heart. One tiny wrong movement had pierced the heart and that was all she wrote.
That's it? I thought, feeling almost empty. I beat her? But she's Olivine…
Olivine Martinez- Back to Normal D1F
It wouldn't have happened if Lottie had been here. Or Marley. Or Ava. On another day, it might not have happened if I'd been on my own. No matter how hard you trained, battle was inherently uncontrollable. A stab in the wrong place, a slippery bit of ground, a million tiny, unforeseeable things could end your life. We all thought our training shielded us, like we'd been told. So few of us stopped to think that so many of us were trained, and so few of us won. If I could have done it over again, I would have treasured a normal life.
Nene Palmer- Swing Vote D6F
Weird discovery, but turns out clowns and autistic people go together really well. I wasn't one for complicated humor. I didn't understand "comedies of manners", like when my mom had dragged me to The Importance of Being Ernest in an attempt to "culture" me. I'd fallen asleep after a very boring and confusing first half. I still wasn't entirely sure which one was Ernest. But clowning, though- clowning I could get. Good, universal, simple humor. You throw a pie in someone's face, and that's the whole joke. The person has a pie in their face. It's funny because pie-covered faces are funny. So Tabitha I could get. It wasn't often that peopling was this easy for me.
"So if you were in our circus, what would you do?" Tabitha asked as we lounged around in the pathology ward- not somewhere people usually lounged, if I knew my vocabulary.
"I dunno if I'm meant for the big stage. Maybe I could work behind the scenes? Maybe an animal trainer with Irina. You gotta be really patient and repetitive, right?" I said.
"Ooh, that would work," Tabitha said. That was another thing I liked about Tabitha, and about all the circus people. They seemed to like me just how I was. Sometimes I said something they weren't expecting, but they always rolled with it. I guess they'd seen weirder.
"So what was it like being in the gang?" Tabitha asked.
I shrugged. "It wasn't as scary as people think." People generally thought we did stuff like starting fights or drive-by shooting people just because we thought of it. We did fight sometimes- usually with each other- but most of us were too scared of the Peacekeepers to have guns. "We mostly rode around and talked about how tough we were. I'm pretty sure some of us were lying."
"If I win, I'm gonna make such a big circus," Tabitha said. "We'll go all over Panem and I'll let everyone in the audience be in it, too. We'll go to hospitals and cheer everyone up."
"I don't even know what I'd do," I said. "I could buy cool motorcycles for all my friends. That would be pretty cool." I'd never had big plans for my life. I liked it the way it was and I didn't see the need for change.
Something came to mind and I brightened up. "My talent can be mountain climbing. I could be a guide or something, or I could just climb. Not the really really high ones, though. That's really dangerous. Or I suppose if I use supplemental oxygen it's not quite as dangerous."
"I've never seen a mountain," Tabitha said. "Not even while I was going around for the circus. There's a lot in the Capitol. Maybe you can climb some while you're there."
"You go to base camp first. You have to stay there for a few days to get used to the thin air. I guess not if you're using bottled oxygen, but it's probably a good idea," I started explaining.
"Maybe I could go just that far and look up the mountain but not actually go up it," Tabitha commented.
"Then you move your stuff up to the next camp," I continued. "What's really weird is that most expeditions have too much stuff, so you have to go back and forth. You bring some stuff up to the next camp, then you go back and acclimatize more. Then you get some more stuff and you keep doing that until you're done, and then you rest at the second camp for a while. Then you do it again, all the way up the mountain."
21st place: Olivine Martinez- speared by Tuesday
I was looking through my list for a fight and landed on Olivine and Tuesday. Olivine would seem to be the better fighter but I thought, you know, Tuesday's been working really hard. She's been fighting smart and figuring things out. She also knows her own strength and hat self-awareness is an advantage as well. Olivine also is working hard and has plenty of reason to win. Guess I just sided with Tuesday today. We'll see how that plays out.