Round One: Larkin vs Ruby (D1)

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

The tribute stands with bare feet in loose dirt and mud below the dark, damp arena. If they look up, they see light and dust pouring in from the cracks in the wooden flooring. And already, they can hear the cheers, the calls for death. A man-sized bird cage comes to a stop at the ground in front of them and if they aren't wise enough to step in on their own, the peacekeepers will shove them inside. Once the gates are locked behind them, they'll know for sure though: this is officially it. No amount of hope will save them now. Only sharpened steel.

As they rise into the arena, the crowd's applause grows overwhelming in its noise, bleeding into a force of sound like a wall, pushing the tributes further into their cages.

"What an exciting show we have planned for you all today!" A voice the tributes may or may not recognize as belonging to Harlan Godfrey booms over any other voice to be heard.

The tributes will notice that they are standing in a courtyard, with a lush green carpet of grass, and they're surrounded on all sides by a gigantic hedge maze. If the tribute bothers counting, they'll also notice 12 different gates encircling the area, each with a bulky padlock the tributes will be able to make out with ease. As if calling to them, the key ring at their hips grows heavy.

They also notice another cage like their own on the other side of the courtyard, occupied with their own district partner. At the same time, both cages will open. As both tributes climb out of their cages and into the arena, they'll both notice a table nearby, full of rather basic-looking swords of all sorts of different shapes and sizes.

"Without further adieu, let the 8th Hunger Games commence! Starting of course with our District One tributes, Ruby Forbes and Larkin Swan!"

---

Weapon: Sword

Larkin Initiative - 60.1
Ruby Initiative - 10.8

Retro Engine Link: Here

Reminder that tributes have not been granted any stations for this games including weapon modifiers, accuracy, first aid, or even stealth. As a result, both tributes will need to make non-attack intro posts before they begin attacking. If tributes refuse to fight each other, please let me (Dars) know asap so that I can schedule mutts for your fight. As always, 24 hour posting rules are in effect and will be enforced.

This fight will conclude once either tribute has died, and you both have until Friday, 28th of April at 6 pm pst to finish them yourselves, or mutts will be deployed to finish the job.

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

Your mind is an orchestra on pause.

This is the moment before the show, and as you close your eyes, it almost feels as though you are back behind the stage with the orchestra, waiting for the curtain to part. One hand on the violin and the other around the bow. The memory of it soothes you in this half-dark, half-light, this muck and mud, this … in-between.

There is no other way to describe it. But again, you have never been any good at articulating your thoughts. Instead, it is music that has always spoken in your stead, and as you steel yourself against everything here, you notice that the distant roar of cheers and shouts almost sounds like a choir.

And although that helps a little, the fear is an entity. A living entity. You have never truly known it before, always sequestered behind white walls and the Maestro’s protection, but that you are out here, fear courses through your veins and makes your jaw throb in a nervous tattoo, a discordant tap, tap, tap. The maestro says you were special, but are you? Bird-boned and angular, too lanky for your own good, you do not know how to fight unless a part of you is asked to. You are not a weapon you can wield yourself, but rather a knife in someone else’s hand. A sword in an executioner’s grip.

Little lonely boys like you never had a choice, though, so why should you get one now?

The peacekeepers come and shepherd you into a large birdcage. You comply. And as you do, you almost imagine Maestro’s shadow looking back at you, her form poised even in silhouette. She smiles with pride and you smile back.

You have always loved to make others proud of you.

When Ma enrolled you to violin classes, you made sure the teacher sang your distinction to her by the end of each lesson, telling her of every piece you mastered with ease. Is it an ego thing? Is it a need to be loved or praised? You have been never been certain of it. You have simply existed to display an image the others adored. The world took advantage of that, of course. In war, everything can be used as an advantage. And lonely boys with lonelier hearts?

Well, they bring a concerning amount of deadliness.

Machineries creak. Birdcage rises. And you, songbird, hummingbird, you tilt your neck and close your eyes, letting the crowd’s music wash over you as you rise and rise and rise.

When your eyes reopen, they flinch at the sunlight. Shapes quickly assemble to colors, and colors to greenery, a vast expanse of it. You absorb everything in. There is an attempt to get a lay of the land as you step foot in the arena for the first time.

You make an experimental intake of breath. Yew leaves. There used to be many hedge fences such as these, although less grander, back in One. You have liquid memories of running along them as a boy, laughing in chorus with boys who didn’t much look like you. They were taller, larger, brighter. You used to be so jealous of them, and you still are. They grew up to bear strange-sounding titles, epithets of glory, and here you are. Wading through muck.

But the world is unfair. You know this, and you have chosen to do something about it.

That something includes the girl who now stands in front of you, frail as the first time you had seen her, lingering like an apparition even in bright daylight. She is weak, small, insubstantial, and yet you do not feel more remarkable than her. Your family may have had a good upstanding in the past, but their wealth got eaten up all the same. District One had little room for families such as yours: acquired wealth before the war, had it slowly chewed off throughout the course of it, and left hollow at the end. It is up to you to make your own path.

And if you could help Maestro with her covert plans along the way, then you gladly would.

“We have met,” you state over the ding of the crowd, meeting her eyes across from what can only be a battlefield. “I played for you. Some school concert thing, right?” Your head tilts curiously. From a nearby bush, you shake loose a sword and hold it up to the light to study its length. In it, you see your own reflection for a moment and you wince.

“They want us to fight each other,” you tell her plaintively. Like Maestro used to, you recognize with a little shiver. It is hard to imagine yourself as the conductor of your own symphony, but the weight of the sword in your hand makes it a little bit easier. Or at least, it keeps the fear and whatever conflicting feelings you may have at bay.

After all, you are a weapon, meant to be used and wielded. You rise the sword at her, nod gravely.

“Fight back,” you tell her. “If I die here, at least you get to live and make One proud.” A small laugh, almost incredulous, escapes him. “There’ll be a handsome reward for it surely that we both want, yeah?”

Your gaze settles on her. You frown.

“Was it a school we met in, or a hospital?”

You do not hear her answer.

Instead what floods your ears is the screeching, spine-chilling cacophony of the anthem, announcing the fight and jostling your bones to life. It pumps into your legs, fills up every artery in your heart, and before you know it, you are alive. Racing towards Ruby Forbes with wild eyes, you are a weapon and you are ready to act like one.

[k!ah]

3 months, 2 weeks, and 5 days. The time it had taken for you to break your vow to Betty.

Father had promised that you would be safe at the reaping. That we were Capitol Loyalists and the draw was rigged to weed out those who vowed the destruction of the Capitol. Another promise broken.

They had swept your hair back away from your face, styling it in an elegant up-do that you might have appreciated if it was another time, and a different place. But right now it felt like they were tidying you up for your execution, making sure that not a hair was out of place, that the dress they wrapped round you sat exactly right. You noticed that they made sure that it covered the still bright red and angry scar that traced the length of your sternum. An imperfection that alter the image that they were trying to create.

They quickly then ushered you into a cage, bare feet shocked by the coolness of the metal beneath you. The cage starts to move and you crouch down, clutching at the bars as though they might save you if the bottom was to give way. They wouldn't. Muscles wasted after years of hospital confinement, you often felt out if breath just brushing your hair.

The sky opens above you and the crowds sheers rain down around you. You flinch at the enthusiasm in their voices. You could feel their eagerness and blood lust in their air, turning the sunlight that pressed against your pale flesh harsh.

Someone stood before you and you had heard enough whispers about the games to predict what was supposed to happen next. You were supposed to kill them, or them you. The thought was enough to send Betty's heart into a frantic mess, pounding fast, too fast. Your hand move to the place above your heart and you try to take a deep calming breath.

“We have met,” when you look up next you realise that you recognise the boy. He had played for you and they kids on your ward. His music had been breath taking, and you had become lost watching him, swept away in the passion and emotion that he managed to capture with each note he had played. Mother had said he was a prodigy. “I played for you. Some school concert thing, right?”

You shake your head, and he frowns slightly, observing you a little closer. “They want us to fight each other. Fight back,” you might have laughed if you weren't so overwhelmed. He was almost twice your size where he had muscles you had... well, it was hard to describe what you had. Wasted muscles that you had slowly reintroduced exercise too. But you were only on week two of your program... The physiotherapist had you lifting 4 kilo weights, not the weight of a steel sword identical to the once he now had in his hands.

“Was it a school we met in, or a hospital?” The realisation was delivered with him charging for you, sword extended aimed at the spot on your chest where Betty's heart was nestled.

I will take care of it. I promise.

"No!" You cry, flinching away from him, arms crossed protectively across your chest.

You crouch on the floor, you're back pressed against the hedge, it pokes into your back painfully. You look up at him, arms wrapped tightly around yourself to make you look unthreatening at possible. Your eyes had turned glassy, and the burn at the back of your throat was all the warning you got before tears began to blur your gaze. "Please," you cry, pushing yourself further into the hedge that refused to allow you to escape. "I can't- I don't know how- please," you hastily wipe at the tears, sniffling loudly. "What if there is another way?"

There wasn't. You knew that.

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

The sword slices open air.

She is quick. You watch as she staggers back, wrapping her arms around herself in a futile attempt to shield her own body, and a part of you wants to tell her to stop. A part of you wants to scream at her to pick up the sword, hold it up high, and attack you back.

The chorus in your ears sings. All the notes that compose the anthem wash away every troubling thought with ease, leaving only a determination that makes your fingers latch tighter onto the sword. Every note, every harmony, all of it, willing you further, inch by inch, step by step- like you were taught to, like you were molded to. The music pulses, smothering resistance and replacing it with purpose. You walk scorched earth and you are unfazed by the heat.

And if you resist, this indomitable feeling would leave you. This wholeness would disappear. You do not want it to leave you. You do not want to feel so incredibly empty like before.

You reach her scuttling form. She is mouthing words, making an ugly shape with her lips, but you do not hear it. You do, however, feel a wetness on your own cheeks. What is it? Where is it from? You raise a hand to brush it off, and realign your focus on the weight of the sword in your hand again.

It is no violin bow, but it should work.

BWWZ5uCQKesword

1090 -- Shallow Cut on Back of Head -- 4.5 damage
(Sword)

sword

[k!ah]

A cry of shock and pain escapes your lips. It was naive of you, but in the very back of your mind you had thought that maybe he would not have strikes you. But his blade kisses your forehead, blood running down your chin, mirroring the silent tears that had begun to run down his own. Your hand touches the spot on your brow his blade had struck and you feel the warm stickiness of your blood.

"Please, we don't-"

You stare up at him, drawing your hand back into your chest. He was going to kill you. He wasn't going to stop.

Your gaze slips past him to your sword that still hung it is place beside the entrance of your cage. Fight, he had instructed and you swallow down the fear and disgust that rose in your throat so quickly. You couldn't do it- could you? Strike down another so that you could have a chance to live? Wouldn't you even deserve to live at that point?

Betty's heart pounded in your chest, and you cleaned your hand into a fist, your eyes darting from the sword to tho boy- Larkin you believed his name was.

Betty had given you a second chance, but would she be ashamed at what cost it would come at to hold onto that chance?

You had asked your mother to meet Betty's mum a few weeks after the surgery. You had wanted to know the girl behind the heart and she had told you how Betty was one of the most gentle, finniest girls she had ever had the chance of know. She had explained how privileged she had felt to be her mother and she had thanked me for a chance to say good bye, in her own way.

How Betty really have condoned the murder of another for the sake of saving yourself?

Larkin raises his blade again and you move.

"Okay. Okay, I'll fight," you mumble, almost defeated. Diving for him you throw your whole body at him. Just beyond him was your sword. You needed your sword.

tv1NxjpLg_unarmed
[ block lol ]

unarmed

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

The blade nicks sweat-slick skin.

But it is not enough. You feel the burden of the sword in your own arm, the weight of it heavy on the bones, and you do not know if it is from the heavy steel or your own- your own-

A bolt of pain shoots through your left temple. The chorus rings like tinnitus in its wake, overwhelming everything else with a terrible cacophony. You hang your head with a wince, jerk the neck. It hurts.

It hurts.

She - some name you do not recall, so you call her redhead - presses her advantage and flings herself at you. Instincts flaring up, you raise your arms, and with a dancer’s grace, spin away from impact. Dust kicks up. Your back now against the hedge, the press of thorns sharp and your breath quickening in tow, you feel a strange feeling you can’t name come over:

Pride?

Surprise? 

Biting your lower lip, you push through it. What other choice is there? You know that freedom has always been a myth disguised as a dream, a lie hiding under a legend, because there is always someone in command and there is always someone who grovels.

That is how the world works. No use in changing that.

You only want your parents to be the one who wields the power this time, not someone else, not the landlord who tried to evict your family when winter tore through the land, not the peacekeepers who asked for bribes when they found illegal trades made by your father, and not the housewives who always laughed at the dishes your mother made.

The onrush of memories roars, the inexorable current of a never-ending river. And as you stand there, hands shaking, you are a convergence of two powerful tides.

You drop the sword.

It clatters to the ground with a clank, jumping once before it falls flat as you whirl around for another one. You find it by the hedge. A long and thin blade, it reminds you of yourself. Holding it up, you find the one side of the sword to be rust-eaten and worn, but the other side glints with a wickedly sharp edge.

You give it an experimental slash and turn to face Redhead. Her feelings are like a riot of colors on her face, many shades you cannot name, but you recognize the desire to survive. The music, at once, sings. It beckons, tells you all is fine with Maestro’s voice, tells you that you are special. You are special and you deserve this. And if you do as instructed, they can save you.

The sword is light between shaky fingers as it is raised, no longer heavy. It catches the light, fractures it into a hundred shards of white, and you let yourself be blinded by it for a moment rather than looking at Redhead’s face. You cannot pity what you cannot see.

“They’ll save me,” you rasp. Wetness on your cheeks, your whole body trembling softly, you say, “If we surrender, they’ll save all of us.”

tcOLER8AOzsword

1133 -- Deep Gash on Back -- 8.5 damage (Sword)

sword

[k!ah]

Your back is still facing him when it erupts in pain. You feel every movement of his blade as it slices open the skin between your shoulder blades. It was like he was trying to cleave you open and find the heart that wasn't yours. And all you could think was that this was it. That he would find Betty's heart and he would take it away from you and that it would be have been wasted on a girl who died less than a year later.

A cry escapes your lips as he pulls the blade from your flesh, the weight of the attack and the momentum of him shoving you out the way, has you falling to your hands and knees. Your fingers become engorged in the grass and you push them in deeper as you breath through the pain. Your knew pain, after countless amounts of surgeries you understood what it meant to be in genuine discomfort. But this was different, and the bullshit stories about how adrenaline 'numbs' the pain...

Grunting you push yourself forward, refusing to look over your shoulder you reach for your sword. Your fingers close around the handle and you rip it from its place, whirling around to face him. The weight felt off in your hands and when you saw your reflection bouncing off the blade you avert your gaze.

Glancing down you notice that during your struggle you dress has shifted, revealing the top of your scar. "You meet me in the hospital," you remind him, one last attempt to appeal at the humanity that obviously surged through him. It was evident in the tears that hand left their stain on his cheek.

"I was dying and you played for me," the sword trembles in your hands. "Do you remember?" You frown slightly, your chest heaving with effort. Fatigue was already causing your thighs to burn, your calfs to ache.

"It doesn't matter, though, does it?" Of course it didn't. The truth would not change the future, it would only make it harder to bear.

They’ll save me, he had said. Who was they? "Who is going to save you?" You ask, closing some of the distance between the two of you. "Will they forgive me?"

JbDo3LZwcUsword
[ 3.5 ]

sword

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

Your blade carves soft skin.

But what remains soft after war? Not skins, not bodies, and not souls. Hands become calloused, bodies become weakened, and souls become stained. You may appear hale and able-bodied, suffering no ailment other than a rather lanky build and some prickling from time to time in your violin fingers, but you know your soul has stains on it that could never be scrubbed away. Maestro made sure that part of your memories would be shuttered, though. You weren’t able to reach for it, weren’t allowed to.

That doesn’t stop your head from trying. That doesn’t stop the- the seams in your thoughts, painful split seconds when the fracture lines reveal themselves for a moment, and you wince visibly as she says, “Do you remember?”

Should you? Who was she to remember? Little redhead, trembling in place, she looks as though she is embers adrift from the fires your family had blazed during the winter months until they ran out of money for coal. That was when the chill seeped in, pouring through the walls, creeping up the spines. If Maestro had not rewarded you for a successful performance a few days after, your family would have suffered the same fate as the trees in the overgrown lawn that winter.

But you blink hard and see a flash of red hair, warm smile, and a flower being tucked in between the strings of your violin. You remember the song: soothing, melancholy, a lullaby.

And the anthem shoots through it. As two music pieces play discordantly, simultaneously, you grit your teeth to bottle up a scream, bringing calloused hands over your ears to block it out, but the music invades your head. The ringing does not cease.

She swings her sword. The world goes quiet.

You watch, feel, and slowly wipe away a smear of blood from the cut now on your stomach, the cloth there torn.

“I know you,” you tell her. “You were a part of them. A group of children meant to die,” like you are now, unless you fight. To remember is to be weak, and to be weak is to die. That is the logic of your world, and that is the logic you are ruled by.

“Looks like they brought me here to finish the job,” you laugh humorlessly.

EjAMgzd1AYsword

1111 -- Shallow Cut on Left Forearm -- 3.5 damage (Sword)

sword

[k!ah]

I know you, he had responded as your sword bounced off his stomach almost uselessly. You had put your weight behind the strike and it had proved to be nothing but a scratch, barely scraping the surface. Your heart- Betty's heart- pounded in your chest so hard that you felt that it was going to jump from your chest. You weren't supposed to be putting so much stress on your heart, it was not ready.

“You were a part of them. A group of children meant to die. Looks like they brought me here to finish the job-"

"- I did die," you say breathlessly as you fight to catch your breath, one hand clutching at your chest as each expansion of your ribs set pain shooting through you, right between the shoulder blades. The night that you received Betty's heart your own heart had failed. Your heart had stopped beating, the disease that ate away at it had finally completed its mission and your heart had lost its fight. Flatlining you had been rushed to theatre where Betty's heart had been waiting.

The window had been so small that they had almost missed it. Legally you had died, the surgeons- Betty- bringing you back to life. It had been a risk to give the heart to you. They hadn't been sure that your body would have accepted the heart. Though, maybe had your heart of survived a few months longer, Betty's heart wouldn't have been wasted on you.

"I died and Betty saved me," you tell him, pulling down your toga enough to show him the top of your scar. "I already died. The job was finished." You drop your hand, clutching tighter at the handle of your sword. "You can't use that excuse for when you murder me." You give him a weak smile, gathering your strength, "sorry."

6dnRDKTAudsword
[ ]

sword

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

Your blade finds resilience.

“I did die,” she all but heaves the words out, tensing her shoulders to keep holding on the sword, eyes wild. The stance of a fighter, the posture of a survivor. You recognize a silver of yourself in her – a person who’s done something horrible to survive but kept on living because the cost had been too high, the price too grand to squander.

And as she shows the scar, your recognition locks in place. Look at you two – children who accepted some risky odds and earned a worse outcome, what a wager. The scar looms even as her hand pulls away from it, a physical mark of what she has accepted.

You, on the other hand, have no visible signs to show the transaction that happened.

Instead, it’s all inward, an internal feeling of both wrongness and oneness, a careful stripping of the soul until it was replaced entirely by something else like new strings on a violin.

Choir in your ears, Maestro’s words urging you on, you sidestep her sword and tries to hit her hard with the end of yours. The anthem sings. The melody of it coaxes out the survivor in you, the cruelty in you, the part of you that willingly sold your control to someone else and allowed them to reforge you in their terrible image.

“Then let's simplify it,” you tell her, low and hushed. “You’ve had your second chance, but I only have one.”

|6GuiAYDn4sword

1071 -- Severed Left Leg at Hip -- 10 damage (Sword)

sword

[k!ah]

“Then let's simplify it,” he starts and you watch as he prepares his swing. “You’ve had your second chance, but I only have one.” You know before he moves that his next strike was going to be debilitating. The muscles along his arms had gone tight and the look in his face had become solemn. You try to duck out the way, to avoid his blade but you were not as agile as you used to be many years ago. Your heart had made sure of that.

You dive just as his blade comes down on you and for a moment the world is silent. In the next second everything catches up to you, slamming into as though your body had just been hit by a train. A scream escapes your lips before you even register exactly what had just happened. Your head spins and suddenly the grass around you becomes damp and sticky. You look down as the white of your dress had become stained in the deep red of your blood.

But the worst part was that a few steps to your left was your leg.

Instantly you gag, rolling to your side your retch onto the blood soaked grass, tears in your eyes. Pain radiated through your body, pulse with intensity in time with the thunderous pounding of your heart.

Your sword is forgotten. This fight is forgotten. The only thing you can manage to process was the fact that your leg was beside you, and even that you were struggling to fully comprehend.

"This- this is so f-fudged- f- fucked up," you rasp, your body trembling.

You roll onto your back, staring up at Larkin. "I can't- I won't fight you anymore. Please. I don't want to do this anymore," your chest heaves as tears stream from your eyes. You were so tired of fighting for a life that was so determined to destroy you. You were exhausted physically and mentally and you were broken. "I don't want to fight anymore," you sob, more to yourself than to the boy who stood above you with is sword directed at your frail, butcher body.

"No more."

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

"No more."

Battered, bloody and blue, Ruby yields her weapon. Turns out that the new heart bleeds too well in piteous self-doubt- even when she stands next to an opponent still largely untouched while she's already so far gone, she chooses compassion. Love.

"That's annoying," Harlan whispers. Great for her. Terrible for Larkin and everyone else involved- after all, what was he supposed to do? Continue to hack away at the little girl begging him not to? Imagine a world where the guy ended up winning this whole thing- people would call him the biggest monster of all! Villains cannot win. That doesn't with work with his dream board: only someone the Capitol can really sink their teeth into afterwards. He's creating a celebrity here, not a war criminal.

But at the same time, he really does feel reluctant to send the mutts in on the very first fight of the day. Oh, well. He has more than enough in store for these tributes, the robospiders are only one.

Only moments after Ruby has sworn herself to nonviolence, the metallic chittering can be heard from somewhere deeper within the maze, and then both tributes will watch as the spiders begin to bleed out from the bottoms of the hedges, expanding like shadows. No one wants to sit and watch a young boy hack a girl to death while she doesn't fight back. But this... a feeding... this could potentially be interesting.

"Kill," Harlan demands. It won't take much at this point, anyway.

[Robospiders attack Larkin]
MUJy14mnYbknife
[3.5]

knife
[3.5]

-

[Robospiders attack Ruby]
knife
[3.5]

knife
[3.5]

knife·knife·knife·knife

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

Your blade finds that heart of her.

And it does its best to carve it out, root and all, but the sharp edge of the sword meets her leg instead and - splat. Red, scarlet red, waters what little flowers had been blooming around them. The wind shakes the petals, whistles through the grassy plain in between them, and sings a high-pitched hum that builds and builds and builds until - 

At the top of her lungs and with every vein in her body, she lets out a scream. She scrambles back, screaming, screaming, screaming, and god, you want it to stop. You want it stop, to have her go silently, your ears ringing as her voice cracks like shards of stained glass. Blood warms your toes once you take a step forth. You feel a part of you get severed alongside her leg. 

And what remains is the emptiness. Closing your eyes, you pull your focus elsewhere, away from her pain and terror, and instead towards what was playing in the wind before. The anthem. You hum its notes, visualize the composition in your head, and for a moment you're a little entranced that you do not sense them before it's too late. 

You dodge the robot's claw barely - it nicks your thigh, right as another one digs its pincers into your ankle.

You cry out. The sound joins the chorus she's singing. The sound is- too much. It doesn't stop. Why doesn't it stop? Make her stop. 

Yes, that's what you have to do. 

Make her stop. 

[Larkin attacks Ruby]

ukx8e0jYXpsword

9.0 damage (Sword)

You perform it like a violin stroke: practiced, precise, and perfect. Her throat is a string - once intact, now cut. A strangled breath, a choke, and the last notes of a melody strummed in a hospital ward by a lonely boy to a dying girl echo gently. 

And then a silence reclaims it all. 

sword

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

For the first few seconds, you only stand there.

Hands shaking, ears ringing, you feel your bones go rigid one by one in a sudden muscle cramp of unknowable proportions, and flex your arms to shake it off vigorously. Dead songbird at your feet, you force yourself to stand high and tall for the kill you'd scored.

But you cannot fight off the wetness now streaming down your cheeks, the raw feeling in your throat. You brush it off with your hand, swallow hard. 

The crowd explodes. It is a wall of sound, towering high, and as you tip your head back to let it wash over your skin, you hear something else. Something soft, a  chirping sound, little tweets -

the birds are humming. 

When you were young, your mother taught you the language of the birds. Your head in her lap, she'd whistle in low notes and chirp with a high pitch, saying one was a heron's hunting call and the other with a dove's love song. You loved the dove's the best. It was so sweet and full of yearning, a love letter tucked within a sound, and before, you used to understand it entirely. 

Now, you barely hear the faint chirps. 

You focus, though, and let yourself hone into whatever the birds are saying.

Move, perhaps. Move and take the key you saw on the dead songbird and move before someone barges in through the garden gate and move before any of those scuttling robot spiders return. You do it, stepping forth to yank the key-ring off, careful not to look at her dead eyes. You cut two small pieces of fabric from her dress-sleeve as well, ball it up into small things, and plug it in your ears. 

For a moment, only the birds chirp. And with a hand steady on your sword, you move.