petals for armor | mackenzie 96th

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

D A Y   O N E :

The cold arenas always seemed the scariest to Mackenzie. He watched the screen, his index finger pressed to his lips in anxiety as the tributes' plates clicked into place in a warehouse-sized wooden lodge. The countdown started just as soon as they were in place, and the next sixty seconds of screentime was taken up by various aerial shots of the tributes waiting. Every now and again, there was a shady close-up of a tribute showing clear signs of fear: lips quivering, or eyes watering.

It wasn't difficult for him to spot Vali and Hal: the tributes' outfits were color-coded according to district. Two sets of forest-green flannel, close enough together that he didn't need to worry about them losing each other in all of the madness. Not that it was exactly promising that they would find each other- Mackenzie had worked with enough Forresters in the past to know how crazed they could become. Still, the plan was for she and Hal to work together, and once the bloodbath was underway, they made it clear that at least for now, that was still the plan.

He squeezed Romily's hand, not bothering to hide his affection as they were the only two in the Seventh floor at that moment. He watched Hal take the first strike at a blonde girl from a middle district, while Vali turned to the girl from Two. "No!" he said aloud to the television, as if they could hear. "They shouldn't split their attention. That's just more bridges bur-" Their friend from Eight followed Hal's lead, a shadow in the aftermath of his missed swing. The girl from Eight swung, and the blonde girl's head snapped back at an awful angle really quickly, before she crumpled to the ground.

A close-up showed the girl's eyes open, staring at nothing, pupils blown. Not unconscious. Dead.

"Shit!"

Mackenzie stood before he could stop himself.

Mackenzie wondered if they were friends with the dead girl and set on vengeance, or if they just didn't have time to process what they were seeing in the moment. People were beginning to scatter- through doors, up stairs, out of windows. Mackenzie willed them to run while they still could.

Then the girl from Twelve stabbed Vali in the foot and it didn't take a genius to know she'd done some real damage. He held his breath. Injuries like this had been the exact cause of death to tributes surrounded by so many enemies in the past. Luckily, Hal and Marceline opted not to leave her. Instead, the entire group left like he'd hoped they would. The fighting continued on behind them, but his tributes were safe. Seven was safe. For now.

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

D A Y   T W O :

The mines were a brilliant choice on paper. The dark provided cover. There were limited attack points. There seemed to be an extensive-enough network shown on camera to imply that the tributes were meant to find it, and that was at least as much a good thing as it was a bad thing. If they were meant to find it, it could also have meant it was designed to kill them. In Mackenzie's Games, the tributes were meant to find the pirate ship, and what a coincidence it was when it happened to sink. The tributes were supposed to end up on that rock next to the lagoon, because that's where the giant shadow monster appeared. Things happening in the Games were rarely coincidence, and the amount of tributes who'd ended up there so quickly wasn't lost on Mackenzie as he watched over breakfast.

He glanced down at the plate of food on his plate: a slice of ham, a pile of fried potatoes, a grapefruit with brown sugar sprinkled over it, and a buttered piece of District Seven's signature bread. He'd been in the Capitol enough times now to have tried the bread all across Panem, and it remained true that Seven's was his favorite. It was the layers of different flavors and textures. There was the bread itself, dark and glazed to a shine, and covered in sliced almonds, which were coated in honey and covered in sesame seeds. Like he said: layers.

This time, though, Mackenzie had allowed the entire plate to go cold as he'd kept his gaze focused on the screen above him. He'd lost his appetite. He sighed, leaning back in his chair and patting his pockets for a lighter, before standing and making his way to the balcony.

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

D A Y   T H R E E :

Romily was the one to alert him to the mine collapse, frantic knocking on a bedroom door she'd locked behind her when sneaking out earlier that morning. He opened it rubbing sleep from his eyes, hair a disheveled mess, no shirt, sleep mask pushing his dark mass of curls up into a pile on his head.

"They brought down the mines right before commercial break. No one knows how bad it is yet but every single tribute's status on the update board has been changed from 'alive' to 'pending.'"

Mackenzie tried to keep up, his half-awake mind jostled in a running start. He felt his fingertips go cold, the world shrinking away from him.

"A collapse?" He asked, trying to buy himself more time. Romily nodded impatiently, stepping past him and handing him and tossing a dark-green robe in his direction. This seemed to be the reminder he needed in order to move, because he sprang to action, shrugging it onto his shoulders and stalking down the hallways as quickly as his feet could carry him. He knew he had a bad feeling about how many tributes were down there. He should've followed his gut and included some message that would've made them flee while they still could.

He made it to the couch just in time for the face of Caeser Flickerman to throw the audience back into what was a whirlwind start to Day Three in the Hunger Games. The screen faded into the dark view belowground. All around, rocks varying in size from pebbles to train-car size rained down on the ground. From any angle, it looked inescapable. Then, one by one, the screen cut to one tribute at a time in order to show the world who was still alive. Mackenzie felt a tension relax in his shoulders when he saw both Vali and Hal still pushing themselves through the havoc. Then, by the end of it, Flickerman's confused commentary filled the space as everyone continued trying to navigate: "It would seem, at least for now, that every tribute is... alive and well!"

"What the hell are these gamemakers planning?"

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

D A Y   F O U R :

Mackenzie knew what it was to fight the darkness. To witness actual shadows pouring from the earth and becoming corporeal. Tangible. Real. He remembered fighting a beast who had many heads, each of them hungry. He remembered watching as an unstoppable force- a state of being- ripped through the remaining tributes and cemented itself as a staple figure in Mackenzie's dreamscape for the rest of his life. But even what he'd seen, what he'd lived through-

It wasn't like what the tributes in the 96th were experiencing. Here, the darkness took over everything. This was a world where the darkness of the 79th was never vanquished. The shadows stretched to every corner of the arena, and with it, brought beasts of unimaginable horror. Leathery wings and haunted cackles, ferocious snarls and confusing manipulation. Every swarm had its own terrible strengths. But the creatures who seemed to be the alphas of the darkness before its expansion, the ones the officials kept calling Volkra- their chosen audience included Vali and Hal, and their friend from Eight. How they'd all managed to survive, Mackenzie wasn't sure. And watching the fight unfold, the tributes desperately trying to end one another in hopes of so too ending the madness and the chaos swarming around them- it was unsettling. This wasn't a situation where the tributes could ever really win, was it? So many were dying. So many were still fighting.

But after Hal made quick work of the boy from Ten, Mackenzie made the mistakes of getting his hopes up that the fight would die down. He was wrong.

It wasn't too much longer after that when the boy from Nine cleaned Vali's head from her shoulders. With the sound of her cannon, the cameras cut from the fight for good and left Mackenzie feeling hollow, staring at his warped reflection in the bottom of the screen. Another year, another Forrester. He wondered what god would permit such a travesty, such a prolonged suffering for a family. Whatever god it was, he resented it for involving him in its twisted games of life and death.

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

D A Y   F I V E :

Seeing Hal's numbers rise was instilling in Mackenzie the kind of hope that wasn't voluntary. People were becoming interested in the quiet boy from Seven, the boy who started the Day of Darkness by bringing an end to Jericho Caleb's life. Mackenzie was greenlighting as many sponsorship deals as he could get approved, shaking as many hands as were offered, brokering as many deals as he was offered. A think piece on the similarities between life in Seven and life in the career districts? Sure, why not! A heartwarming found-footage about Hal's high school chemistry class dedicating their end-of-course projects to him? A perfect tearjerker. As the Games wore on, and Hal worked harder to survive, so too did Mackenzie work to aid him along the way.

His ally killed the girl from Six before too much harm was done to either, and then they were on their way before any of the others involved in the fight could catch them. It was... ruthless, in a way. Good, Mackenzie thought, selfishly. Ruthlessness wins the war. At least, it would always win in this one. There was no other way to leave the arena; frankly, to try and beat the system often directly resulted in one's death in the first place, either by trial and error or so-called 'freak accidents' the gamemakers fail to ever properly explain. Just ducking your shoulder and plowing through the others to get to the end is the only way to do it without leaving with a target still on your back. And Hal and Marceline both seemed to understand that, all while mostly retaining their humanity. It was inspiring, Mackenzie was sure. He didn't much give a fuck about how inspiring it was. He was just glad the kid lived another day and hopeful he pulled through the next few and got to come back home with a pulse to see his family again. Mackenzie was already regretting having to face what was left of the Forrester family when he got back to Seven. At least if Hal pulled through that'd be one family other than his own and Torian's mother who didn't hate him...