The Bloodbath

[L△LIA]

Good morning and welcome to the 1st ever Hunger Games bloodbath, Tributes! This is a very special games and I'm so excited to have all of you in it. First and foremost, I would like to encourage each and every one of you to read the rules, as it makes life a lot easier for everyone when all parties involved are aware of the rules and expectations.

For smooth operation of the bloodbath, please be aware of the following:

1. You must wait ONE HOUR between each of your posts. This counts for every post, regardless of whether it contains an attack or not.

2. In order to verify this, you must quote your previous post at the beginning of each new post (exception, intro)

2. a. It is possible to edit the timestamp of your quoted post to make it look like you posted earlier than you did. This is considered cheating. This will not be tolerated. Anyone tribute caught doing this will sustain +20 damage and will have their attack invalidated.

2. b. Please start each post (before any tables) with your tribute's district and name, what attack number this is, and, at the end, whatever the dice code you roll is. For example: [12M Arbor Halt, attack 3, 2069].

2. c. When you quote your previous post, please delete EVERYTHING besides the tribute's name, attack number, and dice code (as given above).

3. You must post at least once every TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. If more than twenty-four hours has passed between your posts, your tribute will be considered dead due to inactivity. Please post more frequently as you are able. I will be understanding about needing to be gone for other obligations, but intentionally limiting your posting as a games strategy will not be tolerated and will be considered a violation of the rules if it becomes an issue.

4. You can only be attacked THREE times between each of your posts. One tribute may only attack another tribute ONCE between each of the targeted tribute's posts. This means that a tribute may only be attacked three times between their posts if the attacks are by three different tributes.

5. Other rules about bloodbath combat still stand:

- you must wait until at least three other people have posted before you can post again
- fillers are not allowed (and will result in death due to inactivity)
- all dice codes must be immediately obvious, even if you are using a table. Either put it beneath the table entirely, or make it easily accessible.
- you must specify who you're attacking
- weapons that are picked up by a tribute can be claimed by the tribute’s killer

6. Rule adjustments for this bloodbath are as follows:

- alliances are not allowed (IC or OOC)
- prewriting is highly discouraged
- start times will be staggered, please see the list at the bottom of this post
- your first post may contain an attack
- unarmed attacks are not required, they are optional
- attacking itself is not required, it is optional
- all tributes are given one small knife
- weapons may be claimed immediately
- there is no fleeing, but separate threads for death posts are allowed
- rebel tributes are given the following stations: blades, hand-to-hand, and self-defense

7. At the top six tributes, bloodbath rules will switch to standard turn order.

ANY violations of these rules may result in an additional 8 damage dealt to the offending tribute.

Each tribute's damage will be updated on the Retro Hunger Games Engine, so pay attention and don't forget to refresh the page!

Starting health has already been adjusted in the engine.



Today's Weather
The sky is filled with scattered clouds and if you look carefully, you can see a fog of smoke still rising from what must be a distant battlefield. Even if you couldn't see the smoke, you would be able to smell it — a bitter scent of burning things all across the nation.
Humidity: 73%
Temperature: 82F (28C) with high of 90F (32C) as the afternoon progresses.



The start time brackets are as follows:

12:00pm EDT
100 (19) - 2m Dmitri Kostas [ Mattio ]
97 (5) - 8f Maryam Volk [ Goat ]*
96 (8) - 6f Gaia Dais [ Ali ]
95 (6) - 4f Alicia Sykes [ Charade ]*
94 (6) - 9f Dakota Lambert [ Tris ]*
92 (6) - 2f Adder Ames [ Aya ]*

12:15pm EDT
91 (14) - 8m Jack Imberline [ Lyndis ]*
90 (20) - 10f Scorpion Praxis [ Kay ]*
81 (15) - 5m Edison Grieve [ Thundy ]*
78 (2) - 11f Uxue Izar [ Zori ]
65 (20) - 9m Oliver Vos [ Kaitlin ]
65 (3) - 10m Elmo Latch [ Cam ]

12:30pm EDT
55 (4) - 11m Union Lot [ Geebs ]
54 (20) - 3f Yejide Jonquil [ Shrimp ]
52 (13) - 12f Lennon Greer [ Dars ]
52 (13) - 6m Johannes Beaumont [ Ems ]*
52 (4) - 7m Donatello Birch [ Ryan ]
47 (9) - 5f Devon Mercier[ Calla ]

12:45pm EDT
35 (10) - 3m Ambrose Pixel [ Fireflyz ]*
33 (5) - 12m Wesley Blume [ Sidney ]*
31 (8) - 1f Chastity Nightmare [ Aza ]
19 (11) - 1m Malachai Le Roux [ Griffin ]*
19 (8) - 4m Anapos Jinx [ Dreamer ]*
0 - 7f Audrey Manning [ Zoe ]

*denotes rebel

Good luck Tributes and may the odds be ever in your favor!

[aya]

[ 2f adder ames // attack 1 // 2089]

[attr="class","adderPostWidth"]

i have my gods
will you give me my ghost?
sons and daughters
may you kill where my blind heart could not

Arena is more literal than you were expecting. First, you are held in a crumbling cellar, tubes and tap lines crawling up the walls, metal canisters stacked on palates like bombs and drums set for shipment. All empty. You size up the pair of peacekeepers watching you, trying to decide if you'd be quick enough with the rubber hose to garrote one before the other blew your skull clean off your body with his sawn-off. Shotgun. If you'd be able to heft a copper pipe hard enough to concuss or kill with your hands tied.

Even if you incapacitated both of them, how long until they were on you? Infinite swarm, peacekeepers are roaches and where you see one there are a hundred more waiting in the walls. It may be futile, but isn't all of this? Presented with a chance to escape, would any of the others bother to take it? Surely you aren't the only revolutionary among those taken, but the only other tribute you've seen for certain — the boy from home — is a bootlicker and a coward and cannot be trusted not to refuse your gift. Someone of his ilk could never understand how causes are bigger than people. How your death was never about you, but about your sisters and neighbors, friends and fellows, for those who are not born and those you've never met. How your life was given to you by the comrades who came before. How you will freely spit on so many things but never on the trenches they were buried in.

How they'll abandon the effort if it blows up in their faces, so that next year they won't take your sister and Wild Will, or two strangers, or two enemies. So that in fifty years or a hundred, there won't still be children paying in blood for grandparents and great-grandparents who committed the cardinal crime of wanting better lives for them.

The needles gauges on the walls have all fallen over dead, 14psi, nothing pressurized to blow. You reach up to tug on a cord. "Hey!" One of the whitecoats taps on a pipe for your attention. You stare her down and pull the cord down from the ceiling anyway. Nothing interesting happens, unless you count the pigs standing up, redfaced, and dragging you away from the wall.

Down the concrete hallway, you scout opportunities for havoc, but come up empty.

The second destination is the final one, anyway: spotlights blinding, you are marched onto vivid green grass made of rubber, springy beneath your feet, half your opponents situated across the way, the other half ten yards on either flank. Opponents — not enemies. This is a game, isn't it?

You don't know anyone by face or posture, but — stares defiant — some you recognize for comrades the same way you know lickspittles by their stench. There are nods of acknowledgement. You nod along, the way you did when Commander eulogized the dead, lauding the honor of dying shoulder-to-shoulder with your fellows in service of a better world. Gritting your jaw, you swallow back the bile of the lie of it: You are not dying next to your comrades today, but at each other's throats.

The knife at your feet glints in the spotlight.

Pressing your lips together, you whistle a short melody. If none of kids standing across the way from you have heard it before, that's okay. It isn't for them. It feels wrong to charge without hearing the signal tones. The birdcall is your battle hymn, even if it's not as crisp as Gadsden's rendition of the tune.

Your binds are cut in anticlimax, and, like any battle, once the stillness is breeched there is no reigning in the flood. You throw your head backwards, connecting with stiff plastic, driving the face shield back into flesh. The pig snorts; when you dive for your knife, you catch a glimpse of the blood from his broken nose smeared on the inside of the transparent screen.

You wish you could go back for seconds. Armor mismatch, it would be a slaughter, but you always thought you'd die spilling Capitol blood. That boy from back home — lapdog, lickspittle, pig — catches your eye and you realize that you still can.

[attacks dmetri with knife]
fSPR5HJHGGknife
[2089 -- Miss -- 0.0 damage]

winter solstice — cold specks

[newclass=".adderPostWidth"]width:460px;[/newclass]knife

[charade]

[D4F Alicia Sykes, attack 1]

The grass beneath your feet is as fake as any smile the President has ever had. The arena is unfamiliar to you except as a landmark for what came before. There are empty seats above you. It is early and the sky is clear. There is an acrid scent in the air. The fires of revolution sputtering out. They man behind you cuts your restraints off and leaves you to stare at the people around you. You rub your wrists to get the blood flowing.

You vaguely recognize the other tribute from four. He was a technician you think. Perhaps he had unjammed your gun at some point. Set some wires. Your eyes wander around the rows. Most of the kids look half-dead already. You are a little weak from your captivity, but you are in much better shape than most of the others.

Except perhaps for the smell. You were not allowed a shower while you were languishing in prison. You are wearing the same clothes you were wearing when they captured you, a black t-shirt and jeans, both encrusted with dirt and dried bloodstains. Combat boots. They took your coat.

There is silence for a few, tense moments, save someone whistling a half-remembered tune. You steel yourself. There are no orders. No back-up. You are behind enemy lines with no one watching your six. There are no commands, only the unflinching gaze of the peacekeepers surrounding you in riot gear. For a moment, you fantasize about stabbing one of them, but you know that you would be dead in seconds. The knife wouldn’t do any serious damage anyway. Your eyes flick back over to the other teenagers. The children.

Some of them have similar training to you. You can see it in their eyes, in the way they gauge others as potential threats. There are soldiers here. You are not the only one to have tasted battle. You nod as a sign of respect. That is all they will get. The others get nothing. They are meat for the grinder and not worth the effort it would take to acknowledge them.

You stare at the knives.

They said one person would be pardoned for their crimes. One. They didn’t say how.

You have a pretty good idea.

If the Capitol was to be believed—

They are not.

But you think that if there is a slight chance that they will let you go, perhaps you can link up with whatever’s left of the rebellion.

Perhaps you can make all of the death worth it.

It’s a simple equation. Some lives are worth more than others.  Some are more easily saved. Triage.

There is no way to coordinate an assault on the peacekeepers with twenty-three strangers. 

Killing some of these injured tributes would be a mercy.

You execute a combat roll, your hand closing around the hilt of a knife in front of you.

Smaller than military issue.

But it will suffice for this.

You get to your feet, and then you lunge, swinging your blade towards the boy from two, the one who looks like he has one foot in the grave already.

“Nothing personal.” You rasp, your voice scratchy from disuse.

You hold the blade out in front of you with your left hand, your right forearm held up to ward off any incoming blows. You have tested the waters. It is time to see which of the kids are sharks. And which are minnows.

[attacks Dmitri kostas d2m]
WZprqHUuWgknife
-- Stabbed in Bicep -- 8.5 damage

knife

[mat]

[D2M // Dmitri Kostas // Attack 01 // 2109]

dmitri kostas

I cannot say I expected to be captured, tied up, and dragged into hell as a prisoner of war.

Well- I take that back. I never expected to be a prisoner of war, captured by the Capitol. The rebels sought to kill my brothers and me from the moment we let the soldiers stay in our home. They were the enemies who kept me up at night. They were the enemies who I watched out for whenever the soldiers, who stuck by my side after Mom and Dad’s murder, helped us evacuate from one place in District Two to the next.

My crimes were nothing but favors for the Capitol, but here I stand: captured, tied up, and dragged into hell as their prisoner of war. Preparing for what feels like an execution.

The Hunger Games.

That was what they intended on calling it. Ironic. Perhaps if the rebels would have seen being content as sufficient, they would not have fear of hunger at all. District Two of all places had the best chance not to starve if the disobedient had seen all the good they had as enough.

But they failed to do anything of the sort.

Let them starve.

-

I didn’t put up a fight with the two peacekeepers. Both of them had a firm grip on both of my shoulders. They were silent with me, a big change from a short while ago when I could play cards with the soldiers in Two. These two men simply don’t know who I am, don’t know my life story over the past few years. I am their friend disguised as an enemy because of where I come from. They see me as the rebel like the girl is, but I’m their biggest ally here, probably.

She called me their bootlicker. When it comes to survival, in which one of us might take, I’d take licking their boots over getting stomped by them.

They watched my every move, even if I had to take a leak. Probably making sure I didn’t try to take my own life or something. It was tempting, considering the stench radiating from the room, but I know better. I could survive. Go back to Nikolai and Nero. The drive within me to return to Two, to fix the people back home, overpowered any odor.

I can’t tell you exactly what I feel. Betrayed might be the best way to put it. Betrayed by the Capitol who looked let my zipcode tell which side I’m on, not my own actions. Betrayed by the soldiers I helped, who didn’t defend me at the end (but can I blame them? If they were just following instructions?) Betrayed by my district and my neighbors, my used-to-be friends who are now my enemies, who, for six years, failed to think of the consequences of their actions. The rebels are the kids in class who wouldn’t shut the fuck up during study time and got the whole class, even the good kids, a few extra chapters of reading for the night. I hate those types of kids and I hate the rebels too.

Which I feel betrayed most by? I think one might be able to guess. Everyone has their reasons to do what they do, but some people are just foolish to think they’ll be able to reap the benefits of their actions.

They escort us away once more, arms tied behind our backs. I can hear whistling all around, and back-handed comments to someone every once in a while. It’s their swan song, I suppose. The calling card of the rebels maybe. Their signal to the rest of Panem that this is their likely-to-be final stand.

Worry begins to set in now. Their swan song, their calling card, is one that I don’t know. The people selected for this, many of them are no doubt rebels.

It’s an easy way to tell what side you’re on- and an even easier way to make a statement against who isn’t on your side. For the savages of the rebellion, that’s people like me. I’m the target of their rage.

The pain in my stomach multiplies. I just wish to disappear, and all I can do as my legs are forced forward is pray that being the Capitol’s ‘lapdog,’ another way the girl put it, wasn’t as obvious as it might be to people back home.

We are shown to a stadium, huge in size. The green grass, something I hadn’t seen or laid in in a long time, crunches at my feet. I’m still silent, refusing to take punishment from the fully suited-up peacekeepers that I suspect many others might have received.

We’re lined up like back in the day when Dad and I battled Nero and Mom in a water fight: Dad and I on one side, them on the other (except now we’re many yards apart.) Dad would fill buckets and let us try and toss the water onto each other, getting each other wet.

Oh, the fun and games. How did we end up here?

I hear a snapping sound and my arms drop back to my side. The peacekeepers let us all, to my knowledge, be released from the ties.

Then, nothing.

Silence.

Fear.

At my feet, like the water bucket once was, is a knife. They’re at everyone's.

Still, silence.

Only one will be pardoned.

As the girl said, I’m the pig. And it’s tradition for the pig to be pardoned.

I pick up the knife and charge immediately to her.

If there’s one person I know who is a rebel, it is her. And I can’t let that get out.

[Dmitri Kostas 2m attacks Adder 2f, knife]
TXZ81BKF1Vknife
2109 -- Deep Gash on Left Bicep -- 8.0 damage

knife

[goat]

[8f maryam volk, intro]

maryam volk

The cell you were kept in for the past few weeks had been cold. You liked it like that, loved the way it chilled you to your bones, made all your hairs stand on edge. You’d been on edge for years, balancing the line between death and something worse. It made sense to keep up the pattern, especially when the line had been erased and you had no idea where you stood anymore. Nobody seemed to know anything about what was going to happen to you, and you had never been one to beg, no matter how badly you wanted to know. You figured it most likely that you wouldn’t have a trial— they’d just keep you sealed away in this prison for the rest of your life.

Your days followed the same routine, more or less. One of the Keepers would bring you breakfast, and you’d spit in their face, so they’d rough you up and then revoke your dinner privileges. You liked the way your stomach felt when it was empty, the hollowness reminding you of everything you’d sacrificed for this meaningless existence. When you were alone, you kicked at the walls, or picked at scabs in your skin, or peered between the bars to try to see what the Keepers were watching on their projector. It was always footage of the war, because why would it have been anything else?

One day, they moved you from your cell into a small, concrete room, and they tried to interrogate you about what you knew. When you wouldn’t budge, they strapped you down and tried harder. Two of your fingers were broken. Hands were wrapped around your throat. A needle was brought out and jabbed into your shoulder, and it made you woozy, delirious, but you refused to say anything.

You had no reason to keep quiet. After all, they’d gotten your mother, too. You had nobody to protect on the battlefield, nobody who needed their existence kept a secret. You could’ve spilled every piece of information you knew and made the torture stop, but you didn’t.

They returned your aching body to its cell, and from the floor, you watched the announcement of the Hunger Games.

When your name was called later, you knew it was no coincidence.

“Present!” you yelled out, throwing your hand into the air like a schoolchild during attendance, and then you laughed and laughed until one of the Keepers came over and put you back to sleep.



They marched you into the arena like lambs to a slaughter. Too obvious a metaphor for your taste. You were no lamb, not even close, but not everybody there could have been a traitor to the Capitol. It would have been too obvious. If you knew anything about the Capitol, it was that they were smarter than you. No matter how far ahead you thought you’d been, they’d always been ten steps further.

You should’ve realized it sooner.

You wanted to hate your mother for shielding you from that truth.

Your mother might have been dead, and there is no use in hating the dead.

You missed your mother.

When all twenty-four of you were lined up, it seemed eerily close to a school pageant. Despite everything, despite all the carnage and destruction one might have seen, or not seen, you were all still children in theory. You wondered who the other rebels were. There’s no way you could have been the only one. It’s hard to tell, though, when every child in Panem has had their lives destroyed by war. You all had the same ghosts in your eyes.

You didn’t want to hurt any of them. They didn’t deserve that.

Did you even have to hurt them?

If you attacked, you could win. If you won, you could go home, return to the cause, albeit much quieter than before. You could continue to aid those who needed it, because Ripred knew people still needed it. You could try to find your mother.

If you attacked, you’d be just as bad as the people who put you into this situation.

You knew that no matter what you did, whether you lived or died or attacked or surrendered, you could not escape being a Capitol pawn.

What a terrible thing to be.

There was a click behind you, and the zip-ties that’d been binding your wrists fell to the ground. “Thanks, baby,” you said, turning to the Peacekeeper who’d set you free.

He didn’t respond.

You nudged at the knife on the ground with your shoe. They’d pulled the steel toes off your boots weeks ago and left you with damaged leather. As if you could’ve done much damage to a Keeper in riot gear with your shoe.

Stretching out your newly freed hands, you knelt down and picked up the knife, turning it over again and again in your hand. You tossed it up in the air and caught it, something you often did on the battlefield to kill time. You wondered if you could just lean back on the sidelines and watch this disaster go down, not participate, just catch your knife over and over.

Probably not.

“These knives seem pretty sharp, yeah?” You held yours up by the handle, dangling it over the artificial grass. “Anyone wanna test that?”

And then two of the tributes move, knives moving toward another boy, and you press your mouth into a flat line. “Well, you guys did it first. Not me.”

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

oliver vos | attack 1 | 2021

I have no loyalties here.

Not to these other children, these other condemned souls. I have no loyalties to the Capitol, nor to the rebels, want all of them dead if it means I can get back to the kids. Clara is only eleven, and the twins only a year older. My loyalties are to them, and with the zip ties digging into my wrist, I finally let the electricity that's been going around and around and around in my veins and in my bones start to come to life.

I push my wrists against the ties, marvel at the pain, let it sharpen every one of my senses until I am a collection of jagged bits of iron, ready to cut.

That was the thing about building myself out of iron — it had to be tested.

And tested I would be.

The Peacekeeper clips my zip tie, and for a second I miss the feeling, miss the pain, but it lingers, lighting my bones on fire, turning the blood into my heart into battery acid until all that’s left behind it need. Burning need. Desperation. A prayer.

I hear Clara’s scream, and come alive.

Across the field, I see a boy with stones for eyes and a will to match, and I can’t help it when I go straight for him. I don’t think, dont second guess, only go with my instincts and hope beyond hope that I will get back to the twins, to Clara, to peace.

To home.

♦ ♦ ♦

[ oliver attacks 2m dimitri ]

_XVF0k4ts3knife

[ 2021 -- Shallow Cut on Back of Head -- 4.5 damage (Knife)]

knife

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Uxue Izar, D11f | Intro

Days had passed since she last said any words to a single soul.

It was how she got her wounds – the bruises on her face, and arms – by refusing to answer the peackeeper in English, the proper language of the new panem. They’d put her into a boxcar that still had the hay and feed fresh from when they’d shipped in some steers from district ten. She had plastic ties around her hands, pulling them against her back and making sure she couldn’t so much as move them. Not that she had an urge to get away. Uxue was smart enough to have searched the box car for any means of exit, and, finding none, sat in the corner to settle in the darkness.

She was good at disappearing, and blending along into the world around her. She found that sticking out and making yourself known had its purpose, but there were plenty back in eleven that stuck their necks out too often to prove who they were. She was more the leaves on the trees, rustling enough to let you know that they were their, but silent so much you may have just forgotten they existed at all.

At one of the stops on the long trek to the capitol, the box car door had slid open to reveal a couple of men dressed in white armor and a bright white light that cut through the darkness. They demanded that she stand, and she could barely hear the rest of their commands through the sound of her own heart thumping through her ears. ‘Get up! Get over her! Stand up!’ He was shouting, and so she staggered, dressed in her cotton dress and sneakers, not sure what either of them wanted with her. “Espera, por favor, es que… She tried to tell them that she was having a hard time, her fright getting the better of her, but monsters didn’t wait for explanations.

He said to her that she was a traitor for speaking with what needed to be forgotten. She called him a pendejo. He laid into her face, and then gave a few kicks to her crumpled body in the boxcar. They slammed the door of the train car shut while she lay on the ground, quietly crying against the cool of the wood floor beneath her.

She didn’t mind not speaking to anyone. Words were vessels to express what she felt; at the moment she didn’t want to feel much of anything. They were flaccid in the face of the cold of her cell, and the emptiness of the darkness.

She passed the hours thinking of the stories her mother told her. She thought of her father out in the fields, and walking with him arm and arm just a few weeks ago. He had joked that she was going to be the death of him, running off and marrying the Wickersham boy. They’d laughed about the time he convinced her that she was invisible, so that she ran into her uncle’s house and tried to make off with a jar of peaches.

When they woke her she was all out of tears, and words, and anything that could have made them hate her. Despite her gentleness, they pulled her arms up behind her, and lifted her out of the train car as though she was less person than package. She could see the metal of the stadium, the wrought steel that expanded out but knew nothing of what this place was. She had but a few moments before she was down in the dampness of her cell, locked away to wait for the time to pass.

She had heard there was a boy that came from eleven with her. She thought she’d gotten a glance at his shoes from the front of her cell, and heard him cough a few times. But part of her wondered if that perhaps this had only been a part of her imagining who had come with her.

They wanted them to die and – she was surprised that they hadn’t gone and done it yet.

She prayed.

All the words that she wish she had paid more attention to streamed out of her mouth, to the unnamed god, the old books that they used to believed (and still believed, at least in the way that it made them feel better). Traditions that were for tradition’s sake, that melded and changed with every generation but now rung out among the holding cells as Uxue passed time on her knees. Maybe if she prayed hard enough she could be forgiven for all the things that made her an enemy of the capitol; maybe if she prayed hard enough death would not be so unkind to her.

She thought about what made her an enemy – but knew that this was foolish. A girl like her was no threat to anyone, let alone the capitol. But perhaps this was the secret, that they always needed someone to make an enemy because without her they could have no real power. They would always hate the ones that worked the fields and tended to their families, that were not the ones that hemmed and hawed and showed off but kept a simple life, living for one another. She was not a ruby or a diamond or a princess. She was a girl that had tried her best, had lived for her sister Xuxa, and made sure that at the end of each day, left the world a little better than she found it.

When the time comes, and the cell opens, she stood and faced who she thought would be her executioner, only to realize that they were leading all of them out of their cells. This was to be worse, of course – the idea that each of them would have to murder one another in order to live.

She could see their faces, as one of the last out of her cells, and made note of the boys and girls that had been plucked from their homes and carried here. Why were they the ones condemned to die? Was it crimes that they’d committed? Or was it that fate was sometimes cruel and rarely fair, at least, in the sense she’d come to understand it?

There’s the taller boys with their long faces, the stern girl who looks as though she could cut Uxue in two, the regal girl who Uxue swear could have been a capitolite, save the clothes, the handsomest boy she’d ever seen, the girl with full lips and careful eyes. All of them here and all of them ending a story – a single story.

She doesn’t believe that any of them have just this to tell. It is a harsh end to a chapter that shouldn’t have to be written. But she is not naïve enough to think that it is not one they will not tell.

Is she afraid of death?

Yes, she is terrified.

Does she know that she will have to try her best to be brave?

Yes, she knows.

What she can only hope is that there will be a world that lives on without her, that knows whatever void she makes is not final, that there are pieces of her scattered in eleven. There will be more like her, and more still – peasant girls, girls that work hard and are true – just that now, Uxue would not be.

The grass beneath her feet is cold, and though the sun is rising and smoke is in the air, she wonders if this is truly the end.

When the zip tie is cut, and she stands, facing the rest of them, she does nothing. She stands and looks and closes her eyes, thinking back to when she was a little girl.

The knives come out, and her breath is caught in her throat.

The world always needed enemies, no matter how small.

”Espera!” She says, but a whisper.

Is this resistance?

Would Taylor be proud?

Maybe if she tried hard enough, she could become invisible.

[Uxue Izar does nothing, to no one]

[Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]]

[D10f, Scorpion Praxis, Introduction]

SCORPION PRAXIS

Slowly, then suddenly, the cot with the paper gown and aluminum sheet felt cozy - a warmth she tried to carry with her. She ascends one step at a time into the arena, arms bound and Peacekeepers observing her every move. She watches as they do, scrutinizing every twitch and shiver. Would they see as she slipped her pinky finger against the restraints? Would they see - as she did - a woman who wanted to run away?

There's power in resistance. Probably, they had all failed to prove that over the last half decade. But it's still true. Definitely. Maybe.

The world ebbs, blues and greys. She comes to, gloved hands around her elbows, leading her over springy turf. She shuts her eyes against the light, kept them tightly closed until everything quieted. When she lifts her eyelids, she found the strangest sight:

A knife at her feet and people arrayed in front of her.

No, not people. Children. Most younger than her by the looks of things, although she knows after years of war and famine, looks can be deceiving. She hopes the others are deceived, that they see an older, more clever woman. The woman she might have been.

A clicking on the breeze. The restraint holding her wrists breaks.

Choose.

She grimaces through the pain in her belly as she bends to scoop up the knife. It’s badly weighted but sharp, the tip whispering naughty nothings as it comes to rest against her side. By the time she lifts her chi , there's blood on the ground - and for once, it's not hers.

"Interesting," she whispers, taking a step back from the fray. The turf is squishy beneath her feet as she turns, seeking shelter, and suddenly finds a familiar face. "Elmo!?" She identifies him, and then claps a hand over her gaping mouth.

[shrimp]

[3f yejide jonquil - intro - not attack]

My mothers' quarrel wakes me, three years ago on a sticky twilight. I still remember that cup of broth we had for dinner, the feeling of biscuits against the roof of my mouth - made with chicken fat and the rest of the flour. The way it sat in my stomach, heavy, like a peach pit.

They had been arguing for a while: with harsh whispers through gritted teeth, the solid clack of a mug placed on the countertop, shadows pacing back and forth on the walls.

"Just minutes, Ife." Mom says. She was always so stocky, a squat trapezoid framed in the warm glow of flickering halogen. "One more book, you'd all be dead."

I think of Death herself, who'd visited the library this afternoon. She'd left fingerprints on our backs as Ma rushed us away, the sirens screaming drowned out by a collapse.

"Exactly," Ma says, tall and wiry and so, so tired. "And now you're running straight at them with nothin but what - your fists? Those trinkets y'all call weapons?" She takes a long, simmering sip of her drink. "You won't stand a chance."

I can hear the laughter in Mom's voice. It feels like knives.

"Chance or not, they'll still rain down. To them, we're only ants."

The night before my likely-execution, the tears have stopped coming. Oh, the fear is still there: curled up and gnawing, scratching at my insides 'til I want to rip out my chest, to squeeze and scream 'til there's nothing left. Mom used to sit with me, rub my back and tell me to breathe. That it's alright. That I'm not dying. That it's going to be okay.

She's wrong.

My arms are perforated, scabby, my nails caked with dried blood. My forehead shines like the car Aunt Jae rolled up in when I was four, placing me in the passenger seat and taking a drive. My hair is too heavy; there are too many ribbons, wires, bands.

But Ma got me these, tying them tight. Mom braided the anchors. Ade, half-complaining, helped wrap the coils in place, and suggested which jewel tones to use. I've since taken them out when I could, washed them in rainwater 'til Somerset saw, tied them back in with only Ade's grumbling help. I look like a mess - Ade's fault - but it's all I've got left.

...

Whatever happens tomorrow, I don't want blood on them.

The first few come out easy enough - they'd taught me how to tie it proper, to maintain the style even in an apocalypse, but it still takes time. The fifth section gets caught up in my roots, and I need to detangle it all without a mirror. Someone's chanting, a girl's prayers from eons away, are all I have to help the time tick away.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. My throat feels like a wildfire.

Hair against skin keeps enough of me here.

Nowhere for it to go, I stuff them in my pockets, jewlery jangling as the keepers swing open the door with the worst smile I've ever seen.

"Ready to go, sunshine?" She asks, her baton at her side. She leads me, shackled in a line of twenty four, to plastic pitch and a gleaming stadium. I must have seen this place on TV once, twice, spectators lined up to watch a sports game. Or a speech. Or maybe a firing squad. This is much worse.

Ambrose is here, four-five heads behind me. I hardly manage to shoot him a look before the Keeper whips my head back. He looks... terrible. They place us like pawns on a chessboard - I used to play, was pretty good too. 'Til the community center was torched.

And the knives-

"-seem pretty sharp, yeah? Anyone wanna test that?"

No, no thanks.

I do pick up the blade though - sharp end in my hand. It is cool to the touch and razor-sharp, like someone spent hours on the whetstone. Slowly, calmly, polishing a guillotine.

I drop it.

Ma's instructions echo in my head:

Keep your head down. Stay calm, stay quiet.
I love you to the moon and back.

[yejide does not attack]

[sbeeg]

[ d11m Union Lot | Attack 1 | no attack]

Union Lot

The plastic dug into his wrists, slowly sawing open a wound on his flesh. He'd been thrown into a closet hours ago. There was no light to accompany him except for the harsh bulbs in the hallway outside sneaking in between the door and the floor. He watched a Peacekeeper's shadow move back and forth.

It smelled like spoiled butter and rotten crops. And grease. He leaned his head against the cold stone wall, his arms wrenched behind his back so that there was no way he could comfortably hold himself.

He was tired of crying. He'd cried the entire car ride to the train, and then the whole train ride to here. Wherever here was. It smelled like ash everywhere they went. The air was dry, his lips cracking from the abrupt change. They didn't give him any water. They didn't say anything to him.

Union often worked by himself. He was left alone with field machinery for days on end and he'd never felt this alone before.

He hoped everyone back home was safe. For all he knew they'd dragged Lemione and the rest to their own little closet.

Ripred, please don't let that be true.

He listened to the Keepers footsteps. Hard soles clicking against tile. He could hear a voice somewhere beyond the wall. A chanting almost, like a prayer.

Maybe he was hearing things.

He wasn't sure how long he sat on the floor of the closet, but when the door finally opened again the light was blinding. He tried to hide his face against his shoulder to shield himself but they weren't about to wait for his eyes to adjust. Two Peacekeepers grabbed him and pulled him from the closet shoving him out into the hallway. He blinked looking around at the plastic shields and tinted visors hiding their faces.

What was happening?

A hand grabbed his arm and he was marched through the hallways. He saw a few other clusters of of people in white emerge. They surrounded other people like him- young, disoriented, and dirty.

He was quiet, simply moving where they pointed him. The walls and stone fell away and they emerged on a giant field. It was a brighter green than he'd ever seen in nature, as if someone had painted each blade of grass. There were chairs lined up to watch but no one in them. Where they for them?

They moved past the stands and onto the grass. It felt odd beneath his feet, more like wire than plants.

They shoved him into a line and other children fell in line beside him. Most of them looked older, taller and stronger. Union peered around and found hard eyes focused on the ground. He looked to his feet and saw a knife lying in front of his toes.

What was that for?

He watched as Peacekeepers moved down the line, snipping the plastic that bound each child. Once hands are free they attack.

A girl shoves her head into a Peacekeeper's helmet before snatching her knife and slashing at another child.

More lurch, bending down to grab a knife and then attacking the people who surround them.

Is this what they mean by one child going home? That they have to fight to win?

There is a snip and his ties drop to the ground. Union rolls his shoulders bringing his hands up to look at them. Dried blood rings his wrists.

He looks to the knife.

He can't do it.

His fingers cling to the plaid shirt hanging on his frame. It was his father's old work shirt. He never wore it outside. He never wanted it to get dirty. His hands curled into the fabric, his shoulders leaning in as if to hide in plain sight.

Union was frozen in place. He didn't know what to do. He wanted to go home.

His nose is running but he's too afraid to move to wipe it. His eyes stick to the ground where a knife reflects his horrified face back at him.

He's shaking. When he speaks it is a desperate whisper.

"Ripred, help me."

[Sunrise Rainier D2 // [Thundy]]

[Edison Grieve, D5M // Post 1]

______________________

And oh, if you’re gonna build a wall
You’d better be ready for the day it falls

He didn’t get to say goodbye to Mom and Frankie before they took him. It was all screams and hollering and biting at the hands that held him back, but there were too many of them. When they descended upon him without warning, he was neither prepared or armed.

A quick mission; a planned attack.

They shoved a blindfold over his eyes and tied his hands behind his back. He couldn’t see to run, even if the Peacekeepers happened to loosen their grip for half a second. And they didn’t. There wasn’t a direction to his hollering, just crying out into the blankness of the day as they marched toward the unknown.

A train? A hovercraft? Edison had never ridden on either, so the sounds and smells and movements didn’t tell him anything. He desperately tried to formulate a plan of escape, but his heart and mind couldn’t settle into anything useful. The panic started to take hold. His breaths quickened. A tightness clenched in his chest, and his legs gave out beneath him.

”Get up,” a Peacekeeper ordered.

He couldn’t. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t --

”Get UP.”

They unceremoniously hauled him from the ground, keeping him upright when his legs wouldn’t.

The panic didn’t wane for a long time. The movement of their transport eventually quieted his breathing, but his heart still thrummed wildly in his chest.

He wondered if Mom and Frankie were okay. What they were thinking. If they knew he loved them.

These were dying thoughts. He’d seen enough rebellion to know that people who got hauled off by Peacekeepers rarely made a return. Not even their bodies made their way back to the resting place of their home. This scared Edison most of all; not that he would die, but that he would die and not be returned to his mother and his brother. To be peaceful in death was a mercy the Capitol wouldn’t afford him.

He started to cry, and the guards didn’t stop him from sobbing.

They took him to a cold building. The halls were vast, and echoed when he walked. Occasionally he would stumble over a crack, a Peacekeeper’s boot, a sudden step. The blindfold was rough and itched at his eyes, but they didn’t take it off until they entered a room that didn’t echo.

He looked at them, trying to discern some intent from their faces, but they quickly turned tail and left the room, slamming the door behind them. There was the turn of a lock, a laugh, and then silence.

So much silence. So much sadness.

(Flesh and salt and grief…)

The grief overwhelmed Edison as the minutes ticked by. Grief for himself, for his mother, for his brother. For his father, the rebel soldier, who held on to so much hope, right until the end.

This is what his father must have felt.

Hope for rebellion, hope for better, hope for life, until --

The ties cut into Edison’s wrists, and he tried to wriggle out of them. Blood began to drip on the concrete from where he worried away with his wrists, but there was no escaping this.

Hope and hope and hope -- and giving up. The minutes ticked by, but they didn’t leave him waiting long. Two Peacekeepers burst through the door, muttering something about one being pardoned, and they hauled him into the hallway. Down some stairs.

Into the brightness.

A large field stretched out before them, and Edison would have welcomed the feeling of fresh grass beneath his feet. There were few comforts here, and whatever was about to happen would only bring evil. He wanted goodness right now. Grass and trees and sunshine and home.

This was not a normal field, and his heart fell. It was plastic, rubber, fake. The last bit of calm fled his weary heart and ate him alive as more marched in front of him.

There were twelve on each side, staring each other down.

Edison stared at his feet, and then the knife, and then back to his feet.

There was a flurry of sound as the ties were cut.

Edison stared at the knife.

He stared and stared and stared, but didn’t pick it up immediately. Not until the others broke loose with their violence.

The knife was in his hand, but he didn’t move.

”We don’t have to do this,” he said aloud.

Nobody heard him, and urgency gripped him.

”NO. We don’t have to do this! We don’t have to do this to each other! That’s what they want, can’t you see?”

"Ripred, help me," someone whispered from beside him.

Edison's face fell, and he stepped closer to the boy.

"You don't have to do anything. It's okay. It will be okay."

song: If You're Gonna Build a Wall by the Anthony D'Amato

[ali]

Gaia Dais // Intro

Dreams are sweet until they're not
Men are kind until they aren't
Flowers bloom until they rot and fall apart

They come for you- when they come you do not know but the sound of the chain unlocking from the chainlink fence. Wratling, janging it wakes you from nothingness-

You hope to dreams, but you only saw blackness. 

- a not quite sleep. There are two of them this time, the man who’d shot the peacekeeper who’d disobeyed, leaving the air thick with his blood and staining the soles of your shoes with it. You shiver with fear, anticipation, that your blood will stain the dirty cream wall behind your head. Tears threaten as you swallow, mouth dry, as the two peacekepers stride into the cage with purpose and pull you to your feet.

You comply, out of pure fear, and partially out of want. 

“The time for judgment has come girl.” The elder peacekeepers sends a bolt of ice cold lightning down your spine and you quiver in his grip, eyes scrunching tight. “Don’t worry though, one of you’ll be pardoned of your crimes” You feel a surge of impulse, to scream at him that you did not do anything, that you are not a rebel, you did nothing- nothing- nothing- but you know that even silence is not an option with this man. It is still disobedience.

And so they drag you from your cage

Your heart pounds against your chest, the peacekeepers feet pounding against the concrete floor which morphs to linoleum to stone, the drums pound around you in the emptiness of noise and the sound begins to croscendo and suddenly- you are being led along behind two more peacekeepers and someone else. You wish to crane your neck over your shoulder and see those behind you, capture their face, but fear keeps you staring ahead as your led, step by step, up a staircase.

Lightness blinds you as you reach the top, nostils burning as you inhale. The air is clean her, you can feel it as you lungs fill, burning hungrily at the absence of chemicals and stench from the water treatment plants of Six. Despite the cleanliness- you can still smell the war on the air. Rancid, concrete burning, somewhere in the distance and as you eyes adjust, looking up, you catch a glimpse of smoke in the distance above the lip of the roof.

You stare, wide eyed, in awe and fear at your surroundings. You find yourself walking across grass too green to be real, even though you have not seen anything but wild grass before, a stage for the thousands of thousands of empty seats that circle you. Only ghost feel those seats, as you are led to the spotlight, the center of the stadium along side- you realise- the 24 other names who suddenly have faces. The peacekeepers holding put you in place, facing a complete and utter stranger. A little girl. Your heart sinks as you feel the restraints keeping your wrists tied loosen suddenly with a snap.

As you bring your wrists in front of you, rubbing the raw skin there, you see everyones eyes are trained at their feet. You look to, human curiosity overpowering the fear pulsing through your veins and your heart just about stops…

THey have led you from the cage and into the abirotire

A knife lies at your feet and while your cogs are still turning, spinning, trying to form the words in your head as you try to grasp for the answer even though deep down you already know what this means, you stare at your feet. Before you can reach that answer yourself, you look up at the glimpse of movement out the corner of your eye, there is the flash of silver and red.

Only one will be pardoned- you have to kill one another to get there.

The realisation rocks you as you let out a scream. You turn to run, to push past the peacekeepers who surround you. Your fist pounds on the riot shield. “PLEASE!” You beg as he pushes you back, sending you sprawling to the plastic earth again. You turn as the riot starts, the battle rumbling before its eruption, eyes wide you scream again “PLEASE! STOP IT!” but your voice is hollow.

Deep down, you have resigned to your duty before you truly even know it. 

ooc
credit

[cameron]

d10m elmo latch | attack 1 | none

Cool water dripped on my face from a crack in the concrete cell ceiling. I looked up at the jagged line and smiled, a drop splashin’ off the tip of my nose.

Before I could laugh, I ached. Bucklin’ over and grabbin’ at my sides with my one free hand, the other held between chains bolted into the wall. There was no way they expected me to survive in this game. They’d broken my ribs when they came to our door. Beaten my face with their batons, grabbed me by the neck and threw me into a train, shipped me here, to die. To die.

For Ma and Pa’s sins.

I’d never done shit to them, truth be told. I’d never as much as talked openly against the damn capitolites. In the safety of my home I’d speak freely, to the vapid ears of my parents or to the mild scolding of Miss T. “Don’t you let them catch ya talkin’ like that,” she’d warn. “I’d never, Miss T,” I’d say. And we’d laugh, but not now. Now we don’t laugh about the swine who corralled me here. We can’t laugh together when Miss T fled to the wild, long before the “games” were even announced, because she knew. She knew it was gon’ south. She knew.

They tossed me an old, ratty keeper uniform, to put on over the boxer shorts I’d been held in, and I spit on it. A baton met my face and a tooth landed in my spit. Through bleeding lips I rasped, “is that all you fuckers got?” It wasn’t. Three of joined the first, and soon enough all I saw was black and all I heard was the mumblin’ prayers of a girl in a nearby cell.

At least someone had peace in this.



Bright lights startled me coherent, and I glanced around at twenty others lined up along greener grass than I’d ever seen, at the keepers standing behind us, riot geared up and rifles ready. One still held to my hands, tied behind my back, and when he cut the ties I fell to my knees.

For all the times I heard my ma and pa were heroes, were brave and strong and champions of the new world order. For all the times we survived on gifted casserole and biscuits. No one ever mentioned I’d inherited their fate.

Soon blood danced across the field, and I stayed down on my knees, eyes on the knife before me, heart on the life stolen from birth. They’d kept me away, kept me at arm’s reach, and they’d still managed to put me straight in death’s path, leave me bruised and battered on his doorstep. My saviors were frauds.

It was a hard pill to swallow.

I heard my name, and my head shot up. Legs. She was there, on the other side, and I found my own two gliding me toward her, just the way she’d done a year before. “Damn am I glad to see you - er, well, shit, not that I want you to die or nothin’, I just - shit.” I put a hand on her shoulder, more for balance than comfort. “Glad yer alive.”

[✨ zozo.]

audrey manning d7f ; intro

Eventually they come for her.

She's not sure what time of day it is, the same Keeper who'd shoved her into the cell and pointed a gun between her sobbing eyes and told her she'd done wrong for simply breathing collecting her with harsh jerks and stiff arms. The gashes on spliced wrists ache dully as he hoists her tiny body upwards and forwards, out of the cell, down a dimly-lit hall towards light.

Her small, sock-lad feet shuffle with every step, and her hair hangs limp and tangled around her head. Hunched shoulders and a gun so close to her own bound hands, Audrey predicts the worse and replays the midnight conversations over and over again. Sick, Bloodbath, Years and Years. You survived, that's what you did. You survived.

They turn a corner and light bleeds into her eyes - it's been so long since she's seen it that Audrey has to squint toward it, wince at its presence. It throbs in her frontal lobe for a few moments, thud thud thud like the boots escorting her outside - outside?

A child, of course her curiosity peaks. She can taste air again, fresh air, not the stagnant stuff she'd been breathing in for days on end. It smelt like grass. Not like home, but grass all the same, and a cloudy sky greeted her warmly once they reached the turf. Hello, it said, sunlight kissing her pale, sullen face. What a beautiful day, she thought. Despite everything, despite how hollow and sunken and petrified she felt, Audrey could still see the good in this terrible place.

More kids. That's the next thing she notices after her eyes adjust and drink in the crumbling, empty, giant space. More kids, some her size, most taller than she. Some with battle-scars, some scowling, others just as confused as she. But they all had their arms tied up behind their backs and Audrey assumes that they are all there to confess to the same crime: surviving.

After a while, as they all stand in a distant row, the Keepers march forward. Audrey freezes, closes her eyes tightly, waits for the gunshots and braces for a bullet in her brain - but it never comes. That would be a kind death. Too kind for this place. Too forgiving.

Not that she knows that.

The same Keeper who escorted her out to the battlefield unbinds her wrists, and as she assesses the damage done to her pyjamas, her aching hands, her stinging wrists, a muffled voice pierces through the sound of the wind.

"Pick up the knife, kid."

She turns to look at him, furrowing her brows - but he says no more, backing away from her. They all do, one by one, marching backwards like soldiers.

And then someone screams, and it sounds like the war, and a small girl with dark hair stabs another kid in the arm - the same boys lunges toward another and gets her leg, but there's a gash at the back of his head now, and Audrey freezes, trembling, bloodbath, years and years, you survived, she survived, she survived the war but everyone's lunging at each-other and they're all bigger than her, taller than her, she can't survive, pick up the knife pick up the knife she wants to go home what's happening what's happening "what's happening?" pick up the knife-

She reaches down to grab the knife but all it does is glint in the sunlight and her trembling hands, sending light dancing across her face.

"What.. wh-... but.. wh-?"

It's the blood that causes her heart to race, her throat to close up, the awful screams that summon her tears, the war cries that send her into a panic, and her own memories of bullets and war that cause her to shake, violently, she's never been a fighter - not even now.

So she stands there, waiting to survive. Waiting to die a horrible death.

She closes her crying eyes and waits for fate to take her home.

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

( 9f dakota lambert | attack 1 | 2136 )

and it's my whole heart
weighed and measured inside
and it's an old scar
trying to bleach it out

My wrists are raw.

It feels like I have lost my senses, like my soul has been pushed into a cage — and now my body stands on the other side of the bars, screaming at the iron as if my voice alone could make it rust. I slam my shoulder against the concrete walls as if I could send them crumbling, until my shoulder aches and there is a red stain bleeding through my shirt. And the cut doesn’t hurt, and it doesn’t sting, but I still cry. I sink to the floor with my hands tied behind my back, stomping my feet on the ground as if I could will an earthquake to free me.

Some horrible and hypocritical part of me feels shock, feels betrayal — that of all the Capitol’s prisoners, they would trap me so cruelly. I remember the way they had ambushed me, the way I was marched through the streets without a chance to grab my shoes. Without dignity. Like I was a monster, like I hadn’t traded every piece of myself to join their cause. To survive. But then I feel that familiar hunger, that same low growl that urged me to turn my back on everything, that desperate will to live; and suddenly I understand. In the worst way.

I am not someone who can be trusted — and now all the footprints that lead to where I’m lying are thick with my blood, with my shame. And I recall my father’s face as I was dragged past him in the streets, the tears that had been shining in his eyes; or maybe it had been snowing, or maybe it was nothing more than the last remnants of ash falling from the sky. All three could be a symbol of death, in their own way, and now I am trying to be content with that kind of quiet mourning. A candle by a shallow grave, wildflowers and weeds in place of roses.

There is no one that feels sorry for me, so I spit out at that fury at my feet. I leave every disgusting part of myself in this room, in this space, until it is stained with my sins. With my memory. Because I am the girl who betrayed her father, her people, all because she wanted to live. And the Devil remembers my deal, he has a gun pressed to my cheek — and I reach for it, and I touch his finger there on that trigger. We wait there in the silence. In the cold. I hear the echo of the punishment on the television, the sharp crack of my door bursting open.

Of course the Capitol wants me dead. My entire district shares that want. When you have a traitor in the palm of your hand, you crush them — you choke the fight out of them, make them realize that you are the one person they cannot cheat. But now I bring myself up off my knees, like I have still not learned when to fall and stay there. Something in me refuses to die, and it is not a brave feeling; it is frightened and desperate and alone. Ruthless. The Devil removes his hand from mine, fingertips brushing in the dark.

And now I’m holding the gun.

I am always holding the gun.

There is a girl praying, somewhere, in the distance — and I feel pity. I have no right to judge her, to belittle her desperate pleas; because I do the same. Only I do not grovel at the feet of gods. Men are in control down here on the ground, where true power counts, tiny monsters made of skin and bone and blood. And I am the same. All their horrible parts are mine. My face is in the dirt, but so are my fists. So is my fury. I have nothing left to lose, and that is a dangerous thing.

When my cell unlocks, I am confronted with guns and arms and steel — and I cannot run, so I throw myself against the closest guard. I let him catch me, I feel as he jerks me around and shoves me in place. There's blood in my mouth, but I don't show my teeth when I smile. "Sorry, I slipped." And then he scoffs, pulling me behind him like I have grown accustomed to. Like I am a thing that must be chained, and controlled; and feared.

The grass tickles my feet before I even see it, a dead sea of dried green. The dark hallways have bled into an open field, a grey sky still holding back the sun — and I only just realize that I am not alone on my march, that there are other girls and boys and children walking with me. Children. I spit out the blood from my mouth, close my eyes for a moment. And then I remind myself that I had only been a child when the war began; that youth has never been something a rebel could afford.

I am stepping on all the years I have lost, all the years I survived — and I hate that I am familiar with this sound of glass, the way it cuts. They stop me in a row of swollen faces and quiet sobbing; but then I see anger, fists curled so tightly that the bonds might actually break. There is no one reaction to being caged, cornered by the queen and forced into checkmate. Some fight, and some run, and some freeze. And some are willing to do the unthinkable.

I have always been willing
to do the unthinkable.

When my restraints are cut, I lurch forward. As if my first instinct is to charge, to escape — but then I see the knife lying there, the untouched silver. And I do not hesitate to take it in my hands, moving forward and away from the crowd. There is no reason to wait and beg for answers, for forgiveness; I know why we are here. We all know why we are here. This is the blade of the guillotine. This is where I led my people to die.

But these are not my people,

and I will never accept death.

There is a girl screaming in front of me, pleading, and my heart clenches in my chest — but only for a moment, one selfless moment before the hunger creeps in. She does not deserve this, but neither do I. And if there is a chance to be pardoned, to be free, I have to take it. I don't care how false that freedom is. I have never cared. So when I approach her, I grab her by the shoulder and I turn her to face me. "You have to save yourself." But I'm speaking to myself.

I thrust my blade toward her.

I do not always aim for the back.

and it's my whole heart
deemed and delivered a crime
i'm on trial, waiting 'til the beat comes out
i'm on trial, waiting 'til the beat comes out



lyrics : florence + the machine
— which witch

^{[ DARS ]}

( 9f dakota attacks 6f gaia ; knife )
RhIe0pcGKiknife
( Shallow Cut on Back of Head -- 4.5 damage )

knife