Takin' This One to the Grave // [Conquistadors]

[Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]]

there's a sick little suicide in all that we do
you decide, which one's for you?

After a few days of constant training, Asunder could never quite feel his legs. Well, most of them. His knees throbbed, skewed as they were, and his thighs trembled with the slightest hint of exertion. Yet, he pressed on, following the instructions of his mentors, of the training center guides, just like he had followed the coal mine foreman. His arms were a whole different story. Still lean and awkward, they made it through each day with only the vaguest aches. And he was sleeping well. So overall Asunder didn't have much to complain about, not that anyone was listening.

He'd hung back in training, watched the others and listened when he wasn't braying like a donkey. Alliances - friendships? - had already formed and collapsed. That was what he was hoping to avoid. If he committed himself to someone else, he wanted that to last for as long as possible. None of this back-and-forth high school melodrama. Although now that he was forced to get to know his peers, he found them on the whole rather tolerable. He'd even had some fun with Benat and Axel, although when he'd broached the idea of them as allies with the victors of Twelve, the response had been cool.

He made sure not to sit with them at the next meal. Instead he squeezed himself in among the Careers, and ended up seriously angering River Destin. He still couldn't quite figure out why or how that conversation had exploded. And he could feel the ramifications of it in his gut, of having made himself a more obvious target.

He needed to do something to actually help himself, other than swinging an axe. As they all split up into their practice stations, Asunder lingered by the doorway, invariably late even though he was actually in the room. He shoved his hands into his pockets, rocked forward once until he felt the screaming burn in his legs and stilled. There was one person he wanted to get to know better. He'd noticed her the first day before he'd had a good grip on names, and ever since he'd followed her pixie cut through the crowd. She seemed totally no bullshit, in control in a way that no one in Twelve could ever be. Well, other than Heron. But he wasn't interested in Heron.

The thought made his throat sticky. One of the training center overseers prodded him forward, and he chose the shortest path to Gypsy, which took him across the archery range. An arrow whistled by, and a chorus of laughter erupted. Asunder barely noticed, now that he had a mission. He stopped just shy of Gypsy, well within the boundary of her personal space. That stickiness in his throat caught up with him and before he could even get the first word out he coughed on a bit of phlegm. Asunder swallowed, shook his head at himself, and tried again.

"So, yeah, I wanted to talk to you about uhm, getting to know each other better. You're smart with the weapons. Good hands," and he stumbled, looking down at her petite fingers, wondering what they would feel like against his cheek. He stared entirely too long before snapping back up to her face. "Oh, right, I'm Asunder. I would've come up to you before but I didn't want to get in the way of your -"

And then he felt it, the eyes on his back, undoubtedly belonging to Pyrian. His voice pitched upward, knees buckling inward. "He's right behind me, huh?"

banner credit: thg's izoe
song: the matches sick little suicide

[Lulu]

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there's a hunger in the land
there's a reckoning still to be reckoned
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When I held fire in my hands, I almost felt like it was part of me. Stupid, I know; everyone says it's stupid, and you can go ahead and agree with them but I swear I'm not lying. Since I was little my hands had become so calloused and blistered from frequent encounters with fire that I hardly even noticed when I touched it anymore and it definitely didn't hurt. Instead, it felt nice,right. Like I said, it was a part of me. I would run my hands quickly through the pinkish tips of flickerin' flames and let them lick around it, all the while grinning like a maniac. They just worked for me, you know? Fire did. So when I got into that training center on that first day I was quick to head right for the fire making station, only I wasn't gonna sit through all the pointless baby crap the coaches were teaching to amateurs who would never master fire like I already had. So instead I picked up some matches and went to town, with Pyrian right by my side.

After I was done feeling sorry for myself about being Reaped, I'd decided that I was glad it was Pyrian with me and nobody else. And Pyr was damn lucky he had me, too, because he would've been dead meat the moment we got into that arena if he didn't. It was my job to take care of my brother, you see; we were twins, after all, and even though he was bigger and stronger than me, he needed someone to be his ears. And that was where I came in. We were a team, Pyrian and I, through and through. A team against the oppression of our massive clan of brothers and sisters, a team against our dear old dad who never loved us like he was supposed to, a team against everyone in the world that tried to tell us we were crazy. And it only went to show, right? Nothing as stupid as the Hunger Games was going to split us up. Die or not, we would die together, my brother and I.

A few days into training I was setting a couple of twigs on fire and balancin' them on my fingers when the other kid showed up. He was pretty obviously a couple years older than Pyrian and I, and really tall and kind of awkward-looking, in my opinion. I stared at him skeptically for a moment, and then he started to talk, and I raised my eyebrows and twirled one of the flaming twigs around in my fingers as he did. "So yeah, I wanted to talk to you about uhm, getting to know each other better. You're smart with the weapons. Good hands." I'd spent some time with the weapons since training started, but mostly I'd stuck by my trusty flames. I felt more comfortable here, so I had no clue what this dude was talking about. "Oh, right, I'm Asunder. I would've come up to you earlier but I didn't want to get in the way of your—" At that very moment, Pyrian showed up right behind him, and I couldn't help it; I cracked up.

My laugh was a high-pitched cackle, and my siblings never let me forget it. I laughed and laughed, and finally extinguished my flaming twigs with a light puff of air and let them fall to the floor. Crossing my arms, I looked towards Asunder. "Well I'm Gypsy, and that's my brother Pyrian, and he ain't mean, he just can't hear what you're sayin' so he probably thinks you're here to rough me up, or something." Quickly I turned to Pyr to sign to him; I always felt bad when he was excluded from the conversation, particularly when it was my job to hear for him. He thinks you're gonna kick his ass, Pyr, said my fingers. So go ahead and scare him, I could use a good laugh. Since we were little Pyrian and I loved the fact that we could speak in secret; it was our bond, our unique connection. "He's real good at reading lips, though," I said warningly, turning back to our guest.

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and there's gonna be hell to pay
at the end of the day
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[Python]

- - - - - -

The training center was a bitch of a place to be. Twenty-four teenagers were shoved into this room with mentors and coaches, asked to spend their last days trying to master the art of combat before they walked to their untimely deaths in the arena.

A waste of time. Only one of them would actually walk out of the arena with victory on their shoulders, and how likely would it be for somebody like Pyrian to achieve this? Very, very unlikely. In fact, the deaf maniac was probably the most vulnerable of all tributes, considering he couldn’t hear footsteps, voices, anything. Without Gypsy to lend her assistance and pose as his anchor to life and understanding, he would never be able to detect a mutt prowling behind him, or a pack of careers lurking in the bushes waiting to ambush him. He wished he could deny it, wished there was some way to conquer this obstacle, but he had to face the facts; without someone to guide him - this person being Gypsy - he was nothing, he was defenseless, and he was tribute bait. And that’s where the conflict rose; Which one of us survives?

The possibilities haunted him, because in every possible outcome Pyrian was screwed. There were two Keenis in this games, and only one potential victor. Either one or both of them would be slaughtered, and he didn’t want it to be either of them. Death didn’t sound so pleasant, not when he didn’t know what to expect afterwards (if anything) and knew that he had years ahead of him to experience. At the same time, he couldn’t live with himself if Gypsy was murdered, because if she was, the fault would rest on him and him alone. Not the boy or girl that plunged a knife into her heart, but him. As an older brother he was sworn to protect her, to guide her to victory even when he could barely protect himself. It all seemed hopeless, even to the other tributes who eyed the twins with mixed curiosity, pity, and loathing, but Pyrian had to try. If he threw in the towel early he would be a coward. He wouldn’t be able to bear his own damn cowardice, because that’s not who Pyrian Keeni was. He was a risk-taker, a mischievous, cunning, clumsy bastard who pulled pranks and caused misery even when aware of his own weaknesses and vulnerability. That’s why he was beginning to take the training seriously. That’s why he was turning increasingly bitter as the days passed. And that’s why he was gripping a large knife when he approached the blonde boy trying to spark a conversation with his twin sister.

He couldn’t follow their conversation, but judging by Gypsy’s apparent laughter (he recognized the movements and chest spasms associated with laughing))the boy was of no threat to her. They spoke wordlessly for several moments, Pyrian growing impatient by the second, until Gypsy turned to him and signaled to him exactly what the situation consisted of. It was merely a fool chatting it up with his sister, also tricked into thinking that Pyrian would actually rough him up for it. True, he was not comfortable with other tributes speaking to his twin sister, a girl he was trying to protect, but he wasn’t going to kick every ass to the curb that tried. He wasn’t even strong enough to do so successfully - in fact, he was a pretty terrible street fighter. With no ears to aid him, it was simple to fail anticipating a future attack, and too easy for him to miss his target and clumsily stagger into the nearest wall. He was inexperienced, pathetic, his only strong points relating to fire and being an asshole with destructive pranks up every sleeve. Was he going to kick any asses outside of the arena? Probably not, even if he did try. But was he going to pretend he would, for Gypsy? Hell yeah.

Rolling his shoulders and sucking in a breath, he marched over to the timid boy and grabbed him roughly by the shoulder to spin him around. A fabricated mask of rage dominated his pale features as he scowled menacingly at the stranger with tense shoulders and a tightened jaw. He wasn’t sure how convincing his performance was (he figured it was spot on), but he continued anyhow, determined to take advantage of the situation and please the two of them after a day of exertion and misery. Balling his right hand into a first, he closed the distance between them until Pyrian was invading his personal space, attempting to intimidate the prey, and remained forever silent as he slammed the fist into his left hand, a gesture he knew was meant as a warning for others to step off unless they thought they deserved a good pounding.[/color][/justify][/blockquote]

[aya]

But what's stranger still
Is how something so small can keep you alive

Owen Rook —

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Owen had been sorely tempted to join the more rugged, brutish tributes in the combat stations, feeling as if he'd fit into weapons training reasonably well. He wanted to get a better mastery of weapons for his time in the arena; the sibling rivalry that had largely been absent from Owen's miserable childhood seemed to pick up as death loomed: now that he was marked for the same style of death, the District Seven boy was suddenly compelled to be comparable to the late Alexander Hood. After all, Alexander had dominated with the blade that she picked up in the bloodbath, swinging it as an axe and taking ears and arms and legs and lives — three lives. Where a normal person might be somewhat off-put at the notion of snuffing out others in their journey to ultimate demise, Owen, who had been deprived of any sort of childhood, any sort of life up until that point, had no qualms about it. Perhaps when he saw the carnage — when he was the carnage — he'd think differently about it, but in the meantime, his blood burned. He wanted the Games to start, and to be whatever violent pawn he was needed to be in them.

On that particular day of training, Owen had decided to heed the advice of a mentor from a different district, given to some tribute that wasn't him — in lieu of a competent or willing mentor from Seven — and stuck to the survival-based stations. "Where do you think you're from," the shaggy man had said, scowling at his tribute, "Two? Stay away from the glaives, boy, you're better off learning to keep yourself alive during the other 98% of the Games" It seemed reasonable, at least, and Owen's better judgement told him to avoid sharp objects until he actually had a chance to spill blood with them.

Instead, he steered himself toward the activities that came naturally to someone who had spent half his life playing housewife. He'd had to patch up the nastier scrapes his younger siblings had attained on practically a weekly basis — not to mention how he'd stitched up Alexander's arm when she'd accidentally lacerated it on a saw at work because she'd been dead set against paying someone who was actually trained to do so — so first aid wasn't particularly difficult. Woodworking was second nature to practically anyone who came from a district that specialized in lumber, so the shelter demonstrations and makeshift weapons bored him. After several hours of constructing a small, movable drawbridge and moat out of solely wood — he wanted to see if he could get moving parts down — Owen glanced over in the direction the firemaking station, looking for the pair of tributes that he'd seen frequenting it.

No matter how angry, how brash and nasty he'd felt and acted since departing District Seven, Owen Rook was family-oriented, and thus had been intrigued by the Keeni twins from the district just above his since he'd watched the other reapings. The pair of them seemed to have flanked the kid from one of the lower districts — nine? eleven? — who looked a little awkward. The situation interested Owen for the simple reason that he couldn't get a good read on the exchange: it didn't look outright violent, but it certainly had the makings of a confrontation. The District Seven boy had initiated several of those since the tributes had made it to the Capitol and, out of curiosity more than anything, decided he wouldn't mind inserting himself into another. He pocketed his wooden toy and strolled over toward the three tributes, trying to size up the situation.

When he reached them, the girl had already turned her back on the brother and the boy he appeared to be intimidating, so Owen addressed her, eyeing the pair of boys in the meantime. "You're Gypsy, right? I've seen the things you do with fire — and as someone who's spent his life surrounded by trees, I'm quite impressed. I'd be interested in what you've got in store for the arena." He didn't offer his hand to shake; instead, he folded his arms and smirking, turning his attention to the other boys to figure out what was going on.

ooc - sorry for the delay guys, been so busy and have had comp troubles on top of that Dx[/size][/blockquote][/justify]