between the bars // izzy&ines, day 1

[Cait]

ines izar

Don’t ask me how I scaled the ice-slick trees; I hardly know myself.

But I’m here, breathing, camouflaged by frozen foliage and scoping the arena as best a girl of terror can, waiting for something other than a different shade of ivory to catch my eye. My breath is nothing but tiny puffs of frost – the only company I keep for ten, twenty shivering minutes, until the scene changes. Altered landscapes. A multitude of blinking parts come to life. To my right, rising smoke. To my left, twinkling lights flashing staccato.

Warnings. Stay away.

I climb down the tree, jump softly to the ground into a particularly mushy section of snow. I shiver at the wetness seeping into my socks. Maggie waits patiently, looking at me expectantly. It feels strange to be useful.

“We should head north.” Or rather, what I think is north. There’s no way to collect my bearings. I just know where we should avoid, and so we do. We don’t run into anyone else, by some miracle. Doesn’t mean I’m no less on edge by the time the air decides to shift.

It creeps up on me, the darkness. It’s impossible to know how long the fog has been trailing us when the cold masks all and there’s barely any room in your head to have a single thought that isn’t to keep moving, to stay warm. But eventually it cuts through, and the familiar feeling of loneliness returns.

I turn around. No friends in sight. No enemies, either, I think, but the plum-tinted darkness makes it impossible to know for sure.

“Maggie?”

The uncertainty makes me stumble, and my foot hits something hard. There’s a metallic clang that vibrates through the air, up my leg, surely sounding louder in my skull than it does beyond my body.

generator repair attempt

t7gSdENDvP1-10


mountable creature attempt with lasso

1-2

1-10·1-2

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

🌱

Inga hasn't killed us yet, that's a pro.

con, we're in the abyss.

con, we get separated.

of course the arena can't be normal. instead, there's like oversized bats swooping between the clouds, their silhouettes outlined in the flashes of light. shit, the fog's so dense it feels like inhaling tar, texture of a smoker's lung, tinted green. we saw those diagrams in class. and right outside of the school was a convenience store that didn't ID though, little kids with pockets full of cartons. that's how it be.

there's a dip in the ground. feels like i should turn back, but i look to my right and there's pitch dark, look to my left and there's more of it.

forward it is.

three steps in, and something hits my foot. i'm thinking it's a branch or whatever, you know, but the lightning splits through the sky, and all the bones illuminate, rifts in the pit, layered between sediment, skulls looking like lodes of mineral. graveyard for the people, table for the carrion creatures. ha, feels just like home.

i kick the leftover pickings. the femur rolls away, goes clunk against something more wieldy.

lighting goes again. you know what, it's atmospheric, i'll give that to the GMs.

there's a hunk of metal a few feet from me. it's cold when i touch it, the generator.

would be nice to have some light.

thing is, i've always been a turn it off and on kinda girl. wonder if i yank out the plug and then stick it back in, it might do something? works on the t.v.

don't get a chance to try though. someone treads over, tripping over the bones.

i pull out the ice pick again.

"Maggie?"

the metal vibrates when she kicks it.

it suddenly starts to hum alive.

wow, okay.

the ring of lights come on. face to face, she's staring at me, i'm staring at her, girl from Eleven and i rather not like die in the most cliche place. very slowly, very casually, i rest my elbows on top of the whirring metal, rest my chin in my hands, weapon gripped a little looser.

“what's up.”

scavenge roll for bone pit

6utQy7s7yN1-7

1-7

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

Gunner abandons the boy from Eight after his memory kickstarts: one of the punches thrown his way during the bloodbath had been his. He had a thought to hurt him, or push him towards the darkness, but the sight of whatever unholy creatures within the darkened fold left his head addled. His heart hammers unevenly still.

Now he walks, trying to shake off the aftereffects.

Absent of the dark and shadows, the atmosphere is actually pleasant, the thunder in a distance almost nostalgic of Nine’s rainy and monsoon season. The cobblestone streets got all muddied, yes, but a June rain and a gunslinging group goes hand in hand together as the droplets lend ample cover during their missions.

Then lightning flashes, merely seconds before he steps over an edge, before he falls down, before the pit below swallows him whole. It seems a regular sinkhole, purely geographical, until what meager light there is flickers over the bones. Tenths and hundredths even of bones. And flesh and femur and blood and, are those jewelry?

He looks down at the dead bird in his jacket.

“Those your parents?” He laughs to himself. That was funny. The corvid, as if in response, claws up in a quick trail of pinpricks and nestles between his head and the hood of his sweater.

He sighs. “Guess you’re sticking around.”

The engine is up ahead. Drawing closer to it, he sees two other figures too, backlit by the ring of light, twin beacons. Either they are both super confident, or super reckless standing out in the open like that. He settles on the latter when Isolde’s lanky back leans towards the generator, her trademark curls blazed gold by the coppery glow of the bulbs. Gunner doesn’t stop walking, but he does slow his steps. Quietly, stealthily, he walks up behind the two girls, behind Izzy, until finally he towers over them both. He’s about to scare them really, a good boo for a heart attack, when the little imp nested in his hood ruins the surprise with a grating “Kacaw!”

The sound echoes. Gunner winces.

But quick to recover, he curls his lips again into a smirk, hooks both thumbs on his belt, putting up the pretense of a man who had braved the darkness alone. “Did I ruin a sleepover?”

mount without lasso

WPkHXz5JgP1-4

1-4

[Cait]

ines izar

“Jesus – fuck!”

It’s not that it hurts, stubbing your toe on a hunk of metal in the middle of nowhere. Even though it probably should. But it’s more the shock that grips me, compounded by the array of Christmas tree lights that blink on when the mechanical whirring settles to a low buzz. It only gets worse for me when my eyes adjust to the growing light and my worst fears are confirmed.

Not alone.

“What’s up.” Not a question. She doesn’t want an answer.

She’s the poster child for casual cruelness, nonchalant and dangerous. Armed with an ice pick just like me, and yet somehow hers is twice the size of my own. Just my luck; I’m always drawing the short straw. I watch as she tries to mask a particularly violent shiver that courses through her body. Her clothes reflect amethyst – the deep purple the colour of her lips losing circulation. I pull the thermals around me tighter. Square my shoulders and take two steps back. Conflicting messages for her to decipher, but we both know I’m more the flight-not-fight type. “Were you spying on me?”

And that sends the alarm bells ringing at how vulnerable I am right now. My mortality slaps me in the face, my stupidity right there with it for leaving myself exposed. Without strong, brave Maggie around to protect me, I’m as good as dead.

At least she’s not trying to kill me. Yet. She doesn’t make any movement towards me, and that only makes me suspicious. Halfway through a 360 turn, and the lights flicker off once more. My heart catches on the short-circuiting wires. I tell myself to run before things get messy, but the lights turn on again, far brighter this time, when the air is sliced with the piercing sounds of a tortured bird.

“Did I ruin a sleepover?”

At this rate, the whole damn Arena will be here in a matter of minutes.

It’s on me for not having studied the other tributes before the Games began. Maybe then I’d know whether to fear the two kids I’m currently engaged in a standoff with. But when everyone feels like a threat, making the effort to learn the names of your enemies is pointless.

I size them up. A girl with a dagger; a boy with a gun.

Terrible prospects to be faced with. But I make a spur of the moment decision anyway, because it’s all I have to work with. The element of surprise is on my side, I tell myself, as I move swiftly to the other side of the generator and grab the girl’s spare hand. Fingers interlocked, I hoist our arms into the air. For solidarity? I don’t know. All I know is that two against one are better odds than one against one against one, if you’re in the majority.

I hope it scares him.

“Yeah. Only girls allowed. Sorry,” I manage to stutter, sounding the most unapologetic I’ve ever been before in my life.

scavenges bone pit

YfqsM3BlQC1-7


mountable creature attempt with lasso

1-2

1-7·1-2

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

🌱

who knew that it would work just like the t.v. honestly thought i had to wait in the dark until someone like Felicity showed up, but good old kick did the trick.

i'd give her a high-five, but she backs away. “were you spying on me?”

um, what. i make a face, try not to roll my eyes.

“okay. don't get all big-headed.” the light flares over us. i walk around the generator, metal pressed to my back, warmer than the air, feel it buzz through me. think i remember her, back in the lodge, like clinging onto one of the careers. “don’t even know who you are.”

don't have time to think about her either, because a bird shrieks in my ear.

i turn around with the ice pick, and Gunner's there. grin on his face, half in shadow still.

well shit. didn’t know he could scream like that.

then, a feathered thing sticks its head out of his hood, perched at the crook of his neck. not exactly a bird, but it's got a bony beak, tiny thing nestled against him.

it’s so fucking cute.

forget about the gun, i’m looking right at the lil guy. i need to pet it, like base of the hierarchy of needs, you know how it is.

“oh my god–”

girl from Eleven grabs my hand suddenly. raises it up, and i stare at her.

“oh, we make an exception for handsome fellows.” i point to the ball of feathers, it tilts its head, holding out its little claws. and how unbelievably adorable. then i turn back to Gunner.

“well. guess you can stay too.”

[Cait]

ines izar

Don’t even know who you are. I wish it had stayed that way.

I guess I wish for a lot of things that could have been different. There’s the reality of now so far from the rest of the world I want to return to, but I’ve lost track of its good and bad parts. Eventually, everything becomes a haze of grey, ambiguity beckoning.

Maroon watches us – inquisitive or bored, I can’t read his face, my eyes are too heavily locked onto his gun. Amethyst doesn’t let go of my hand, and that would probably make me feel a little more at ease on any other day, if it was any other person or place.

I hadn’t counted on her wanting to make friends.

The situation feels too delicate for her olive branch. Give a boy an inch, he’ll strangle you with the rope – safe to say I don’t trust him at all. But maybe danger beckons danger; the first extension had been mine, after all. It feels rude to be the first to pull away. I begrudgingly, warily, tear my eyes away from the shotgun in his hands and make myself look him in the face.

“Well, if we’re sticking around, maybe we should kill the lights?” It’s easier to stay hidden in total darkness, obviously. It might paint me as a coward in their eyes, but I’d rather that to the alternative of being ambushed, hunted, humiliated and killed.

bone pit scavenge

07ZC_OSWtq1-7


mountable creature attempt with lasso

1-2

1-7·1-2

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

Little shit betrays him.

He glares at it with a look of treacherous contempt. The corvid remains unfazed. It, at Izzy’s cooing, retracts its spindly arm for a moment and then, after a moment, puts it back out towards her. Clutched within its gnarled claws, is a little morsel of what to be, well, rotten fruit in offering. Hard to make out specifics out through the mold, though. He wiggles his nose.

His eyes, gunmetal grey in the twilit light, slide towards the girl next to Iz as she takes her hand.

A brief study happens - a quick memorization of the face, then the connection. “You’re the Izar,” Gunner drawls with an accompanying chuckle. Even a chucklehead like him knows about the curse of a family such as the Izars. “Well I’ll be damned. Do you think you’ll be the first to make it out?”

From the looks of it, no.

But again, if that fifteen year old girl can crack open a skull, who knows what this paper-mache bones and skin Izar is capable of?

The terrible, terrible idea brewing in his head comes to a simmer. From beyond the light, jagged chartreuse lines of brilliance flashes again, illuminating the winged shapes prowling it, many and many in waiting. And he has few and few options left. If he remains here, at the heart of their little lighthouse, he’d nothing more than a target on display.

After a pause, he says, “well, I’ll leave you two to it then.” His eyes slide towards Izzy, almost pass on a wordless warning. There is a softness there he still harbors, some need to protect her; Gunner so badly wants to wring the neck of it.

But it’s fine.

She’ll die on her own pace.

Quietly, he lowers a hand down towards the core of the generator when they both are not looking, fingers questing for a wire to rip or a switch to turn off. The grin he makes at Izar’s next proposal holds the sharpness of a shiv. Enough to bleed, enough to wound.

“Oh, you haven’t seen what’s in the dark.”

mount without lasso

ketrdlHdX01-4

generator break attempt

1-5

1-4·1-5