The Underbelly | Finale

[[GM] EKRAM NOVARA | mattio]

The tributes, voluntarily or involuntarily, move through the arena wreckage by way of the water's current and threatening mutts. At the depth of the basement, one "room" has been left intact. Water trickles in through holes and crackings in the ceiling and the support beams, but a pair of fallen pergolas holds it up and protects the tributes from being crushed completely. The water continues to rise, though, providing a consistent threat even if death from the falling debris is not imminent.

The tributes see through the dim light of a single waning bulb that their numbers have largely depleted. Having seen the deaths of those nearby before, they could assume most people who did not make it into this salvaged space, no larger than the stage they spoke to Harlan on last night, probably met a similar fate.

The water rises while the wreckage cracks from the pressure, adding further holes to continue the surge. Outside the makeshift walls, tributes can hear shouting and the clashing of metal on stone. Perhaps someone is coming to rescue them? Until then, there's one thing everyone must do: survive.

---

Retro Engine Link: Here

Welcome to the "Finale" of the Games! The Games will continue as normal, just in one group thread to keep things organized. The survival threshold for this round is 50, and it will remain at 50 until one eligible tribute remains.

To check for the last round's natural damage, you can refer to the last post in your original mandate.

As stated in the rules, if all eligible tributes fail the check in the same round, the tribute with the highest failing roll will be crowned the winner of the Hunger Games!

The survival check threshold is 50. Good luck!

[arctic]

My arms continue to flap about. Like a bat in water, which we’ve seen a few in our pond back at home. They just look so weird in there. I look weird, a small boy from five (me) that has never swum once in his life trying to out-float the rest of these people. Because there has to be a winner, right? I can’t imagine it’d work out well for those boxed up people in the corner. But maybe they deserve to get their butts kicked for this! Come on, who put these two idiots in charge?

My anxiety rises a few harsh words for me, yet my body is overridden with adrenaline to keep afloat. There’s a single warning bulb, which has dimmed, assuming to give us hope that there’s not many people left in this body bath. Water continues to rise, and I wonder which sorry fish has lost their home at this point! Where do they get all of this water from anyway? Through the rushing clashes of water, there’s faint voices, panicked, and metal banging against metal. On the outside, something is happening.

I don’t know what, but they must be trying to free us, right? This can’t have been planned. Eventually, they’re going to rescue all of us when they see we’re all never going to stop trying. How long can we all go?

As my lungs rise and fall, tired, my arms feeling like weights hang from them, I don’t know how much longer I can go. All I can do is try, gosh darn, and get back home for the kids. Maybe they’ll see me return and have hope.

Maybe, but somehow this world might just burn that feeling.

EL36P7Rzj81-100

1-100

[d1b portia maybach [frankel]]

ASTON MAYBACH

”Hold tight.” Aston tells Imogen, both of their hands grip onto each other’s wrists.

Someone he was so determined to leave behind and he is holding onto her for dear life. For his life. For her life. So many mixed feelings are blending together in his mind. Orders barked by that ringing voice of Zak and sentiments for a girl he has only known for a few days. Life is not a one-man race, there will be hands along the way offering their help and Aston will take every one of them. He just needs to make sure he takes the right ones.

The gushing water is becoming intense, Aston swims against its force while dragging along Imogen. Something tickles against his ankles; its texture feels fluffy and then it pulls. Aston is submerged once again, and his legs frantically kick out. He loses his sword. He loses Imogen.

There are few seconds under the water where everything goes dark. Where Aston is content with losing this race. But his heart is still beating. His lungs are still fighting and his rise to the surface is like an instant switch from taste of death to life.

Whatever brushed against his legs is gone. And so is Imogen. ”IMOGEN!?” It is the loudest he has ever shouted while being in this crumbling colosseum. His one good eye desperately scans around him, there are so many ripples on the surface of the water from falling debris and the caged animals that are just as desperate as him to survive. ”Imogen!” One last call. He ducks his head under water but there is nothing. She is gone.

Aston wanted her gone. But not like this. Not this soon.

Aston beats a fist against the water, he is just floating here with no plan. It has slipped away. He should try harder to find Imogen. Try harder to survive. Aston is so used to being given a set of instructions, a boy who doesn’t make his own decisions in life. He follows orders from Zak during the races. He follows a recipe created by his family when making the perfumes. There is nothing he can put his name on without it featuring someone else’s.

If he can get over the finishing line of this longest race ever, it will all be on him. He just needs to find the finishing line first.

There is a trickle of light in sight, a single swinging bulb that belongs to a slightly intact room. If anything could replicate a finishing line, that is it. With the little fuel he has left inside of him, Aston brushes through the water. He closes his mouth, trying not to inhale anymore water. He needs to reach that finishing post. This can’t be a photo finish; he needs to be the only one crossing it.

ELEGANT

Aston attempts to reach the room.

GZmoVjo9C51-100

1-100

[gamemaker artemie 🦉nyte]

blair murdock.

Their deaths play on repeat. Devour, devour, devour. By the water or the horrors that lurk within it. This place is a gaping maw and I am forced deeper into it's bowels, past the stomach and it's lining. Into places light was not meant to touch. Every time I pause for breath I see another face, a disfigured little piece of a person I never got to know. It takes me longer than I should to leave the boy nestled warm in a snake's belly but I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing. Perhaps they're going to let us all die down here. Maybe they should. I don't think anybody's supposed to survive the horrors that have taken root in this twisted cage. It's fucked up the way my own shallow breaths echo back at me as I wade through flooded halls, a grim reminder I've survived what I shouldn't. I think I should be more injured than this, I wish I had more pain to focus on. It's just me and the memories. The water filters me into a room not quite ruined, blessed by a single dim light and the briefest touch of the floor beneath my feet. There's nothing left, not even adrenaline. I think I'm only still living because I don't know what else to do. There's groaning overhead - the weight of the world threatening to collapse upon me. I am not Atlas. CRxzEDQKzm1-100

1-100

[Diomedes Adama D11 - Cato]

Maegor Syndulla

Cannon after cannon rattles through the arena, and it's hard to make out what's even happening. The current is pushing at me, and I'm holding on to the armor because it's keeping me afloat for now, and even then, there's mutts coming from every direction. So many are drownings and it has to be the worst death ever, but it doesn't matter because I'm still here. I'm still alive, and I have a chance to make it home alive. I have a chance to win, to show everyone what I'm capable of. But I'm terrified, terrified of drowning, terrified of falling short, of failing, and I don't even know where this water is trying to take me, but I'm so thankful that I left the ledge I was holding onto. Once the canons stop sounding, I notice that only three others are floating in this. Just three more people have to die. I just hope that I'm not one of them.

My mind is racing, and I keep trying to keep myself relaxed, but my body is heavy. The clothes are heavy. Everything is trying to weigh me down and pull me under. I have to stay relaxed though. I have to make sure that nothing goes wrong. I have to fight the water to keep myself from falling into the eternal darkness. I have a lot to prove, and being from twelve and winning this game would be all that I need to keep myself from ever having to approve myself again. I take a breath, and I focus on myself and refuse to focus on anyone or anything. I can't let my mind wander too far. I can't let myself forget the real reason and meaning behind everything. I have to make sure that I keep my own head up. I want to scream.

I start kicking my legs again hoping it will do something because I need to dodge some debris. It's not much, but it's definitely enough to make me wish that I would have learned to swim before coming here. Not that district twelve really has any good swimming areas that I know of. I just have to keep moving. I can't stand still, I can't stay in one location. At this point, my body is fatigued, and I don't know how much more I can handle. But I'm so close. I'm so close to surviving, so close to seeing home again. Is it possible? Can I make it? Can I actually do this? I refuse to let myself believe. Three more cannons must sound, and I just hope with all my being that one of them isn't mine.

District Twelve

[googlefont="Oswald:400"]

_Vh4_mrClW1-1001-100

[fox]

Z H I W E I

► ► ►

The light is liquid on the water. It wavers with the current, and she follows it in instinct. A familiar thing brushes by her as she wades, softer than the pieces of wood and stone, cool and weighted, holding the shape of a branch below the surface, reaching towards her ankle like it was the sun.

She doesn't look back at it.

She passes by a silver cage kept above water level by a mound of stone from a crushed pergola, stuck between pieces of jagged rock. Inside, there is a little bird, fluttering frantically against the thin wires. It is not a bird she's seen before, painted like an oil slick when its feathers catch the dim light. It beats its wings so hard that she wonders if it might damage its fragile, hollowed bones.

The stones are rough against her skin, wet and biting as she leans against it. It wouldn't be a terrible thing to close her eyes. Her head feels very heavy. She could fall asleep right now with a soaking, seeping exhaustion in her chest.

But for a moment, listening to the fluttering of feathers, she finds the strength to lift herself up against the mound, arm outstretched, and undoes the closed latch.

The bird hops out carefully. It stares at her, and she stares back.

Then, it flies away into the darkness.

There are only a few of them left.

A girl like Zhiwei is unremarkable – despite the senseless calm, the strange feeling of not belonging to her life, despite a suspicion of existing in body only. In the end, it would have been more terrifying if she had laughed every time she wanted to, cried every time she felt like it, screamed out loud when the world was cruel to her. They would say she was driven out of her mind, but men could do ordinary acts of terror and still be called men.

Her father would've cursed her with the name Zhaodi if not for her mother, who was always treading water while her husband, motherhood, loneliness all pulled her down like weights. And even then, she'd often tell Zhiwei to not be selfish when she had wanted the same things as her brother.

How funny. She's never been asked what it was she wanted all her life, and yet even in death, Sicheng got what he desired. It was exhausting. It had all been so exhausting. How was she supposed to have lived?

The bird sings, a low trill, echoing off the walls.

She thinks she can see the glimmer of its wings.

Nvw0KRh|1J1-100

1-100

[🖤 cait]

arlette foy

She smiles at you as she sinks, and your first instinct is to scream.

You see fragments of mutated beasts float past you, and your second instinct is to scream.

Your head hits the side of the Colosseum as you’re deposited into the underbelly of the Arena, and your third instinct is to scream.

When you finally find your lungs, you scream. Swallow down too much water and taste someone else’s blood in your mouth.

You scream louder.

The light doesn’t reach you at the bottom of the world. Sunshine is traded for solid ground, but the reprieve from the rising water is short-lived. The flow refuses to let up. Where seconds ago you were on tiptoe, you are already treading water again.

You can’t see a metre past your own face, but the dwindling voices tell you all that you need to know. The end is coming.

“No more death. Please.”

You want to call out and beg for someone to save you, though you think you’d hate yourself even more if you did. The only reason you’re still alive is from clinging to other peoples’ sacrifices. It feels wrong to ask for more.

But you are a selfish girl. You just want to live. And even though you’re scared to reach out – to put your blind trust in yet another person, to take that risk you’ve seen go so wrong, so fast – you know your limits.

You can’t make it out alive on your own.

“Is anybody there? Can you swim to me? We just need to stick together and wait for them to save us, and then we’ll be okay, we can all go home...”

Home.

You don’t know if you want that.

You’re sure you don’t want that.

But you want to live for something bigger than yourself.

“They let me live. I can’t... I can’t let them down.”

You remember it all. You embrace every painful flash of death.

You are a phoenix.

You won’t forget it.

2uQuZmRGGL1-100

1-100

[gamemaker artemie 🦉nyte]

       not you, just a little ghost i keep around

"No more death. Please."

I desperately wish that was a promise I could keep. And how cruel of her to beg that I try. There's no feeling in my fingers as I reach for the newcomer, dead limbs grasping at the memory of hope. "Hold on!" The back of my throat is worn raw from screaming, all metallic agony as I call out. "please, please, just a little longer."

A fresh surge of water breaks through cracked foundation, I've barely enough time to suck in a breath before I'm dragged below the surface. The weight of the water holds me in a cruel embrace. Alongside me floats a body, her raven hair tangled in knots in front of her face, but there's something peaceful about her. Like a little bird suspended mid-flight.

I could stop. It could all be over. And I wouldn't even have to die alone, there's so many precious bodies here.

The thought is a brief flicker at the back of my mind, soon overshadowed by concern for the girl I'd heard. She was still there, calling out for help. I have to believe that or I don't think I'd have found the strength in my legs to kick toward the surface.

And I'm trying to fucking hard to be better. I want to be good and that's supposed to count for something. I'm supposed to find silver in all this gore and grime.

But it's silent when I emerge.

"no. nononono." It's a frantic thrashing of limbs, wasting precious energy as I fight the current to get to the place I'd last heard her. "I couldn't- the water pulled me under I was going to-" The excuses die in my throat, it's not like she can hear them.

I didn't mean to let you die.

But she's still fucking dead, isn't she?

It's quiet. Save for the sounds of the world ending all around me, only my own labored breathing echoes back. "Hello?" A pathetic little plea "Is anyone there?"

I'm more stubborn than I thought, because I keep trying. I'm pretty sure they're going to let us all die down here so I beat my hands against the walls until they're bruised and bloody. "I'm alive!"

I say it over and over again, an oath sworn in blood.

"I'm alive! I'm still here, I'm not dead!" Something tears at my ankles but I don't feel exhausted or afraid or even angry anymore. I can't feel a damn thing. I try again, softer this time. "Don't let me die down here. Please."

I don't know how long I stay there, screaming the same words over and over again.

I am here. I am real.

I am alive, whatever that means.

BLAIR MURDOCK