no one takes us prisoners [ET + BARFs]

[Sage]

[presto] [/presto]

Tybalt Capulet Ty blinked, or at least that's how it felt, how fast everything changed for him. One moment he had three allies and now, after what felt like the blink of an eye, he was down to one because of the alliance Circe was in. A nightmare that had seemed to come to life before his eyes and he'd been unable to do anything to stop the course of events that had unfolded. How was it that now Six, the girl he'd vowed to protect, lay dying in front of him and the boy from ten, Abel, Ty thought, was also laying dead? Why hadn't he been able to do anything? Why hadn't he tried harder to do something to stop it? Anger, hot and dangerous, began to fill his veins, he would make this alliance pay, pay for killing the innocent girl from six he'd promised himself he'd protect and for killing the boy from ten who he may not have really known but was a part of his alliance nontheless and Gabi had trusted him. He looked up at the boy, Nat he believed, from four, who had lassoed him apparently to his only remaining ally and had tied them together back to back. What the hell was this, why would they tie them up unless they planned to make them their hostages. What advantage would that give the other alliance? It baffled his mind at the pointlessness of it but at least it'd give him a chance to talk to Circe again, without having to bother catching a bird he'd seen flying about that he recalled from earlier games was known as a delivery word and could be used to send messages in the arena. To say Ty didn't care about death was a lie, a lie he used to try to tell himself when he thought of his parents, that he didn't care that they were dead when in fact, that day still haunted him, seeing them bleed out in the streets much like Gabi and Abel now did in front of him, bringing flashbacks of that terrible day. His dark eyes turned to Circe, the one he'd flirted with in the training center, the one he'd thought was attractive in a way he'd never really seen before and who had been the one responsible for Gabis death. "What strange fish hath made his meal on thee" he spat, noting she didn't look quite as pretty as she had when he'd first met and hiding the anger beneath the surface of his skin. [Attempts to catch a word] qZx4MUk21-4 Template credit to the lovely Ghosty

1-4

[Cato]

hammerfell

orion

district two male

---

Perhaps I was stupid enough to think that she would actually try to kill me. If every career was murdering machines, she would've took the option. Maybe she has a heart hidden somewhere inside the demented body of her's. Yet at the same time, I was ready to go meet my brother. I want to see Mason again. I want to be by his side. I want the nightmares to go away, but here I am standing inside of one. A living hell that I actually volunteered for. In way, I'm unsure of what to do. Or what think.

Letting go of her, I start walking away. My heart racing as I try to decide what to do. I try not to think about anything. But I stop when I hear the sobs escaping from her lips. Violent animal like howls fly through the ground, and my heart shatters into millions of pieces especially when the sword clanks against the ground. What do I do? Do I stand here and pretend I hear nothing? Do I continue walking away and leave a sobbing mess of a trbute behind? Mason would. He would've left her behind saying she was weak and that she didn't need his help anymore. But I'm not Mason. I'm Orion. I help people. I heal people. I should help her, but I don't know how.

"And I'm never going to lose you, Orion Hammerfell."

But I keep going. Heading away from the factory. Nat and Gunner took tributes prisoner, and I'm anxious to see what's happening to them, but most imporantly, I'm worried about my friendship with Circe. I love her. I never want her to die. I never want her to leave. My entire world would end; I would die. I want to love her. I want to hold her. I just want this moment to last forever. It's when I see her again, I feel controlled by something so foreign. Something that I've never felt before. Yet I can't control myself.

"I love you Circe. I'd by lyon if I said I didn't care for you at all. Your smile is what keeps my heart beating. When I'm around you, I have butterflies in my stomach. Your mere presence is enough to make my day. I am forever in love with you."

My mind is numb after I speak, but I quickly realize what was said. I told her that I love her. That my love for her is why I'm angry. It's why I don't want her to die like Elya. I can't imagine my life watching her die. I don't want to. I don't want to ever leave her, but as reality sets in, I feel all my blood pooling in my cheeks, and I'm sure they're glowing bright red at this very moment. Odysseus and Torka must be laughing at me.

I open my bag, and quickly remove the thing I received from the sponsors. I have no idea what it is, but I'm going to hide in it. Diving in head first, I fall to the ground. Blinded by darkness. I just hope that nobody sees me because right now I just want to be invisible.

---

OOC Notes
Professes love for Circe
Awkwardly hides in merman tail

[Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]]

[googlefont="Coda Caption:800"]

lyon

circe

district two female

---

When the Delivery Word had lazily drifted down, right into her hands, she had thought it was her bird. She was ready to chew out the sesame seed-sized brain when she realized the note was not addressed to her. Even as she tucked the letter into her pocket, she dared not think about whose name had been scrawled on the paper. It wasn't hers. That's all that mattered.

She had decided to return to camp for Gunner or Nat, or so she kept telling herself. For once, she had more than her skill with a weapon to offer: a fat bird and firewood. Gifts, for leaving them to secure their prisoners. Mostly, she didn't want to have to explain what had taken her so long. When she reached the far end of the conveyor belt, she dropped the bags and Orion's sword. It bounced on the rubber, come to rest in the center of the belt. Maybe if she's lucky, no one will ask why she has all of Orion's shit.

With her thirst slacked and her heart unburdened, other sensations filter in. Her leg aches where it was gashed in the Bloodbath; she needs to change the bandages. Her forehead is still oozing slow from the diving bird and the duct tape is a hundred million little ants marching across her face, neck and ears. Once, when she was almost a teenager, she stumbled into a crop of poison oak. It lit up the side of her right leg in tiny red hand prints. She hadn't told anyone, not even Jaime. That night, she twitched and rolled. He'd climbed down from the top bunk and fetched a salve from their avox. She woke up that morning to him massaging it into her leg, disappearing the angry red marks.

It wasn't the first time they'd kissed, but it was the first time she'd wanted to, beyond mere experimentation. What she wouldn't have given for a meadow of poison ivy and Jaime's soft hands.

Instead she had a pair of flat eyes and a foreign mouth that said, "what strange fish hath made his meal on thee?"

She leveled her gaze at Nat Krigel, as though to say, can you believe this guy? She huffed, taking one lazy lap around Tybalt and his captured allies. Though she was free of the burden of the bags, she had tucked away several knives in her outfit. As she walked, she flipped one out of her boot, twirling the hilt between her fingertips until she came to stand directly before Tybalt. "Thou hath confused a fish with a lion, but 'tis no matter. Thou art a flesh-monger, a fool and a coward. I shall carve thine penance from thine own flesh."

Circe smirked, pleased that she hadn't forgotten all of her textbook training. She slipped the knife over the edge of her hand, wrapping fingers around the hilt as she brought it to Tybalt's pulsing neck.

It's not the cataclysmic revelation that she'll kill Tybalt Capulet - right here, right now. It's not the steady look in his eyes or the sudden racing of her heart. What stops her is Orion's voice.

She flips the knife into her boot again, turning to her ally. She's forming something that might, from a casual observer, look like an apology. I was angry, I spoke too soon, except for those key three little words. They're at the tip of her tongue, ready to admit fault, to tell him she's sorry -

When three other words tumble from his lips.

Had her jaw not been duct taped and goggled into place, it would have fallen to the Factory floor. His speech glues her in place, wipes her mind to a spotless clean. When he is done, she can think of nothing to say, nothing to offer him. Her heart is as heavy as her leaden feet, so heavy it is almost full...

He turns as she lifts her hand to - to do something. To stop him? To hold him? She doesn't know, and he doesn't give her time to find out. He's gone, and Tybalt is mouthing off at her back, and she just wants to forget herself in Gunner La Torre and she wants to go home.

Circe drops her arms in disgust, whirling around to the trapped alliance. "What are you looking at? Show's over."

---

OOC Notes
eats curve's the word???

[Circe is addicted to catchin' words]

U5YJErlq1-4

[sorry lalia]

1-4

[mat]

[googlefont="Kristi:400"]

Geo Venn shatter me ”Cya later, kiddo…” I whisper. He may be spiritually gone, but his friendship, his courage, and his humanity all are soundly in my heart. He is truly one of the best people I have been in these games, alongside Gabrielle who is in the same condition as him. Don’t act like you’re broken Geo. The people watching want you to break, to crumble and fall down. Tick ”Sorry.” I stare at Gabi, who seems too broken to speak, just like Abel was. She looks weak, and all I can assume is that it’s my fault, too. She volunteered for her sister, again just as courageous as Abel leading us. Gabrielle O’Dale sacrificed herself for her sister, and now she’s lying on her death bed. I can’t believe it Geo, you’re actually realizing the shit you helped make happen! Surprising. I look at Gunner LaTorre, her eyes seeming like the devil’s eyes and the rest of her body complimenting it by being psychotic. Tock ”Sorry.” The voice of Tybalt Capulet, the absolute last person I wanted to ally with, calls out to the blonde one. Apparently, she goes by Circe, or at least that’s what I heard them call her. I hop up onto the conveyor belt, looking directly at Gabi. Her heart was made out of pure gold. The leather that surrounds her body has blood spatters all around. I mean, we all do, but these injuries look more serious, and the blood has yet to stop coming out. Just breathe, Geo. I wish breathing wasn’t involuntary. Maybe if our lungs just forgot they had to work, we would all be dead in seconds. We’d lose the oxygen we desperately need, and none of us could function. Or, maybe we could lose all of our muscles and just let our bones rattle on the floor. We could trade them for healthy, new bones. Nobody could know if the bones they are with are truly their own. Tick ”Sorry.” The bone white facepaint I just recently placed upon myself mixes with my vibrant red smile. The solution of the mixture is nothing more than a greyish-brown, if that could even be a color. The tears are still climbing down my face, and each path they leave brings down a new splotch of the color all the way down to my chin. Tock ”Sorry.” Stop it, you’re letting them shatter you. I cannot be shattered now, not when I feel like I owe them the most. You cannot shatter me, Gunner, Circe, Orion, Krigel. I won’t let you. I stare at Circe again. She definitely looks like a career, and the shots she got on us were pretty nice. However, when she speaks to us, I can’t help but laugh. Tick ”Sorry.” ”Y’know, Circe, you shouldn’t be Lyon like that. The fight might be over, and I must say that it was quite asstounding. But episode two is just beginning,” I say, trying to act intelligent. However, talking back to someone with a sharp object can never be helpful. I look into the book, flipping to a random page, and I read in my head. ”And trust me, it’s gonna be better than the first because it'll have more of uranus,” I speak quietly now and to the side, hoping that at the same time, she hears me, but also, she doesn’t. I hope, I hope, and I hope. Tock ”Sorry.” [starts keeping track of his puns] [has 3 puns]

[анзие (Anz)]

[googlefont="Coda Caption:700"]

krigel

nat

district four male

---

Orion is... oddly sweet in his confession, the words from his mouth taking flight across the short space between his lips and her ear. If this were any place else, Nat would walk faster to get out of their scene. If anything, Orion appeared less as a giant then, curled as he is in trademarked silence. Diminished seems appropriate in description.

He's never seen Circe at a loss for words before.

Clearing his throat, Nat forcibly turns away from them, focusing his gaze on the... 'prisoners'. Tybalt's expression was twisted like a crumpled sheet of paper, nothing like grief and everything resembling anger in the edges and lines of his heartbreak. Beside him sat Geo, lips moving to form apologies in tandem with a pendulum clock. Tick, tock, sorry. Nat closes his eyes like blindness were earmuffs in the winter.

Around him their words flew, piercing through his darkness. These words he caught effortlessly. plucking them from thin air like they grew there. These words he wished slipped through his fingers and out of mind.

"Why are you apologizing?" He may have sounded harsher than he intended, but his eyes on the boy suggest otherwise. "You didn't kill her." Even as he speaks Nat thinks about Elya and how it felt - knowing. It shouldn't have been her. "It should have been me," Circe said, her voice empty even as she holds grief and swallows pain. Nat turns his gaze from Geo, sucking in the breaths that could have been meant for someone else.

Maybe that was an answer he wasn't ready to know yet.

---

Nat Krigel makes grabby hands at a Word
ykSPH9Pv1-4
I failed you Lalia

1-4

[L△LIA]

[googlefont="Coda Caption:700"]

la torre

gunner

I seem like an adult but I’m just a child
that’s really tall
My young dreams are fading fantasies

---

Anything that can't be fixed with stripper cash and duct tape probably isn't worth having anyway.

Gunner has several hundred dollar bills gripped between her teeth, one hand ripping them to shreds and cramming the pieces into the stubborn gash across her bicep. The bloodied faces of government officials flutter down around her, papering the floor with a self-portrait of Gunner that is at least twice as accurate as any of theirs. She's camped out on the conveyor belt, a little ways down from Gabi, stripped down to just her vest and jeans. With her leather coat rolled up beneath the dying girl's head as a makeshift pillow and her salt-stiffened shirt shoved into a backpack full of birds, there's just enough skin on display to keep Nat from meeting her eyes. The rest of it — boots, armor, and weapons — are scattered around her like landmines... or at least like a landmine that was already set off, little bits of Gunner spread throughout the room.

The awkward screech of duct tape echoes out as she tapes money into her wounds, trying to staunch the flow of blood. Still, Circe and Tybalt's voices outrank it, rising up in a verbal spar that sounds like another language to Gunner. "What strange fish hath made his meal on thee," he says and her upper lip pulls half-back in confusion, setting her entire face askew. It's not as if the District Four doesn't know what a fish is, but seriously: The fuck is this kid on about? Circe's reply only confuses her further and all she can do is throw stacks of stripper cash at Nat until he can't ignore the barrage anymore and finally looks over at her. I thought I was supposed to be the crazy one?

Evidently the banter doesn't put Orion off. The word love falls out of his mouth not just once, but twice and Gunner's stripper cash aim stutters for a moment before redirecting itself at him. The delay in throwing gives him just enough time to pull... a mermaid tail?! onto his head and the bundle of cash bounces off harmlessly. She's laughing too hard to stop and contemplate any repercussions for what just happened, tears pricking at her eyes as she pulls herself up and walks over to Nat. Looking back and forth between his face and whatever is happening with Orion, she picks up what appears to be a homemade petrol bomb from Backpack Boy's rucksack that she left laying around on the floor and casually shoves it into Tybalt's mouth. "I don't know what you're on about," she pats the prisoner on the head with a smirk and more than a little patronization, "but I'd keep that trap shut now if you don't want to set it off."

Without so much as a pause, she turns her attention back to Nat, tugging him toward her by the hem of his shirt. "I need your abs, Baby Krigel." There's a glint in her eye as she winks at him, her voice dropping into a tone too wickedly sly to feign subtlety. "Shirt off." Gesturing up, now with her hand as she sits back down on the floor next to her displaced baggy of weed, his face clearly can't tell whether she's being serious or just fucking with him.

The answer is: Both, Baby Krigel.

Legs kicked out in front of her, one hand distractedly instructs him to lay down across her lap as the other pulls yet another hundred dollar bill out of her pocket. It takes a solid minute or two of staring him down before he seems to realize this is not optional and sheepishly complies with her demand. "I need a solid surface," she teases, playfully smacking a palm against his stomach a few times, just hard enough for the sound of skin-on-skin to crack against the air. Smoothing the greenback out on his abs (which, for the record, are less of a joke than she assumed they would be), she can't resist the merciless impulse to poke at his side until he yelps from the tickling. "Hold still," she mutters even as her grin and obvious amusement counter the words, "if you fuck up my blunt, I'll never forgive you." Taking one last petty jab at him, she lays the weed out on the bill with a heavy hand before rolling it up with effortless speed.

Her musket is propped up against the conveyor belt, the tarred bayonet still flaming, and she leans over with the joint held between her lips to light it, as if there isn't a difference between a match and a massive torch. Sucking in a deep, sweet, smokey breath, the edge of the earth falls away. A contented hand pats Nat's belly as she exhales a series of smoke rings, one after another after another. "You did good, Baby Krigel." Maybe, just maybe, she means more than as a table. Pulling the joint from her lips, she holds it to his, fingers pressed softly against his mouth. "Just breathe."

Through the haze, she doesn't notice the quiet stream of blood creeping down her arm. It looks as if stripper cash and duct tape might not be enough to save the La Torre girl after all, but she's long past being bothered about it. Honestly, few people have ever been all that convinced she's worth having around anyway.

---

[does general FA with $600 stripper cash and duct tape]
[shoves a petrol bomb in Tybalt's mouth]
[rolls a joint with Nat's abs, $100, and her baggy of weed]
[lights up with her flaming bayonet and gets HIGHHHHHH~]
[drinks water]
[eats]