The Bloodbath

[WT]

[D5M|N Samiyuq Hernández Huapaya | post 4 | attack 2 | 1144]



"—and I'm not sure I can do that."

Privately, Samiyuq isn't sure either—isn't sure ze's doing anything at all here but dragging out a single death—but hearing that won't help Maeve. "Do your best," ze says, firm as an order, while Maeve, shaky but upright with sword in hand, takes the first step away. "You might surprise yourself." Hefting hir own sword, ze begins backing away and adds, a touch more softly, "Good luck, Maeve." For whatever good it will do you.

Ze tears hir eyes away and turns, and by the third step ze's running.

In the handful (pile) of moments (months) since ze caught Maeve's blow (went home), things have changed too fast to track, and nothing has changed at all. Screams split the air, sometimes pleading and sometimes taunting and sometimes in simple guttural pain, and blood and vomit lay strewn over the sand between what look to be the first few corpses. Only the sand itself remains unfamiliar, sinking under hir feet and spraying behind hir even as ze hits blood-sticky patches, throwing off hir balance until ze finds a short, gliding stride that helps.

Somewhere in the fray Watcher and Kastilla, long gone at this point, must still be fighting. Samiyuq can't waste too long looking for them; ze said ze'd catch up, but they'll either hold their own without hir or they won't, and running distracted into the point of someone else's blade won't help. Ze gives it a solid try, though, scanning the floor as ze moves. A trio scrabbles at a wall—good for them, but too many white uniforms glint above and Samiyuq remembers Yejide Jonquil's open throat too vividly for hir to have much hope for them, let alone join them. The curly-haired kid who attacked Kastilla just after Samiyuq—at second glance themself no older than Maeve, ze realizes with a twinge—trades blows with a furious opponent, blood-splattered and down an arm but still fighting; even if ze knew how to decide which death to delay and which to speed on its way, ze doubts ze could make it there in time.

The newest corpse hangs in the air mere feet away, suspended by a pair of arms whose owner's eyes meet Samiyuq's.

The dead tribute looks almost serene as the living one lets go, despite the blood—face relaxed, limbs still loose, skin pale but not yet grey. Any squelch of the sword sliding free through viscera drowns in the surrounding commotion, and the sand offers an inescapable ready-made cushion. Death can never quite be mistaken for sleep, no matter how otherwise whole the dead, but there's a similar peace in it. Whatever has become of the person that once inhabited that body—lingering for the first of their eight days, already journeying away, already gone—they're no longer bleeding and trapped here with the rest of them.

Even when ze's wanted that peace, ze's always wanted to find it on hir own terms. If this stranger ever skewers another person, it will not be hir.

Breathing deep, eyes open and clear, Samiyuq takes hir own advice: sword up.



[D5M|N Samiyuq Hernández Huapaya attacks D4M Jonas De Lange, sword]

6WAPSa|33Xsword

[Deep Gash on Cheek -- 8.5]

sword

[tick 12a / calla]

d12m jett davies | attack 5 | 1046

j e t t

I make contact and it echos.

You didn't fight like I did. She spits out, You didn't see-

"I saw enough. I saw them take everything from me."

I saw them take my parents' lives and my brother's spirit. I saw them rip apart the foundations of everything I knew.

She drops her sword, fist swinging wide, and there’s an unfurling in my stomach. I can barely take a breath before her momentum is carrying her again, before she's lashing out and I'm flinching, cursing myself for it, but the hit never lands.

There's a sound of contact and I startle, turning in time to see her recoil from the boy who reminded me so much of Joah.

The Joah before all this.

And he doesn't look like Joah anymore. Not at all. I think maybe it was just a trick of the light, something in the way he was standing. He doesn't look anything like my brother but I can't bring myself to walk away.

What was your part in the war? The girl asks, accuses, and I wait for him to laugh, to say that she won't be the first rebel he's killed, or the last. I wait for him to drive his sword into her chest and make good on his promise.

The canaries still sing.

The rebellion is dead.

But it never comes.

There's just a pin drop, a focus narrowing.

I did help, Not-Joah says, and I don't

I don't think I understand.

"What-"

I think maybe I heard him wrong, but once he starts he just doesn't stop. He is somewhere else, somewhere distant, raving, talking about war and horrors and suddenly I'm a year younger, tucked into the corner of a dark closet and I can't breathe.

Some kind of fog clears, the earth shifts, and I lose a part of myself, start gaining something else entirely. I was sculpted around a singular idea, born into a war I didn't understand until it was too late. I was born with nothing but an instinct.

And there are images flickering behind my eyes, a dozen polaroids taped to the inside of my eyelids. I can still see my parents and my brother, all the people in Twelve who were just trying to survive.

"You're one them?" I ask, and I think there's something stuck, dying, in my throat, "You're one of them."

"How-" and I've never felt so small, so utterly insignificant, "How could you be one of them? How could you be like her?"

I don't know exactly what happened when I saw this girl attack him, when I saw someone who might've look familiar in another life and stepped in like it was my fight, like I owed him something. If I had known who he was-

I don't know.

But don't fucking touch him he had hissed at her. And I don't remember Joah ever swearing, not even once, but I do remember him helping me up, letting me ride on on his shoulders after the kids in the schoolyard decided I would look better on the ground. I remember after the bomb went off, we spent the night under the kitchen table because neither us could bear to be alone.

The taste of gunpowder makes me remember, it brings me back to my senses. There's ash underneath my tongue and a landslide in my ribcage.

(How could he be like her?)

I've waited long enough for this.

I reach down to the sand and lift my sword, the blade already stained with a mixture of sediment and blood.

“You.” I face the girl and watch as she sways in place, "I'll give you your rebel's death. Your pawn's death."

This time, I don't stumble.

"When you see my mother, tell her that her son's finally avenged her."

jett attacks avonlea ; sword
UE5VMUYK8Isword

stabbed in back -- 9.0 damage

sword

[✨ zozo.]

aisha aquino | post 5 | 1110

AISHA -

"Ten cuidado."

"Igualmente."

Her target turns and misses Aisha's blade by inches and she falls with the weight of the weapon, letting it drag her down with a thud. Her legs are shaking as she shuffles up sand beneath her boots - Be careful, xe had said. Aisha was far past being careful and she knew it.

The wound in her leg screeched every time she leaned her weight into her right knee and with every movement it got worse and worse, thumping with pain and blood and the constant reminder that she needed help. Aisha grits her teeth and steadies herself on her blade, pushing her hands up from the handle of her sword until her elbows lock and she can take a second to gasp for air-

"Get away from me!"

She tries. A lazy, lop-sided lurch, two steps behind her position but the younger girl has stamina - just enough more than she to graze the skin underneath her overall sleeves. "Ah!" Aisha cries, dizzying heat in her eyes, and as her angel launches forward with her own blade the rebel collapses to the ground in a heap.

Her breaths are desperate, shallow, hoarse. Everything spins, blade on blade, girl on girl. It's all the same. Someone screams behind her and a leg falls off in the distance, then a hand, then an arm, her own limbs tingle in the sunlight. She's tired, she's so fucking tired. So she just sits there, in the sand and the dust and the blood, and she watches for a second. An ear flops to the ground then another arm. Get up, something in her screams - maybe it was just the songs of war, screeching bombs and shattered glass. A mousy girl slumps to the floor un-moving. Another one jumps around and around in a mad panic. Get up, get up, fight. With honour, with honour, get the fuck up-

There's a roar behind her - angel too busy watching her own back to watch Aisha's. A boy runs toward them, hair matted with a red crown seeping into his eyes, in a snap she lunges for her sword and lifts it to strike but Aisha is not quick enough, again. He slices at her side as she rolls out of the way - another scream, another pinch of tears between the bridge of her nose.

"Mierda!" Aisha hisses, crawling away on her knees and dragging her sword along with her. She's got three seconds to get up, two seconds, one-

Then another boy's sword slices through the air and off goes Sangre Niño's hand. He retaliates, and the idiot blocks a sword with his arm - that falls to the ground too, all Aisha can do is bite down on her lips to stop herself from gagging as she hauls herself upward. More furious, violent words - some she understands, some she does not - fill the air, scarlet spills down the back of Sangre Niño's neck but he's not done fighting, even as the boy without an arm flees in a panic.

Neither is she.

It should be cowardly to go for the boy without a hand but Aisha doesn't feel brave. She's scared. She won't admit it aloud but she's scared of this kid, all blood and teeth and rage, mangled hair and blood-soaked overalls. He's the worst part of war. Unstoppable. Chaotic. Like a molotov cocktail waiting to explode, she's the gasoline. The spark. Either he kills her, or she'll kill him, or perhaps they'll kill each other.

Some part of that she thinks he understands.

"¡Vamos niño!" Aisha yells, "¡Vamos a jugar!"

Win or lose, she'll go down swinging.

- AQUINO.

aisha attacks ajax, sword
41P6J91sqPsword
Severed Left Foot at Ankle -- 9.0 damage + 1 blades

sword

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

axel moreau | no attack

A X E L      M O R E A U

I am overwhelmed by the feeling of wrongness—between one breath and the next, I hear his voice, a shattered-glass thing that cuts almost as easily as it's overlooked. What? he whispers, and it spreads down my spine, thick like honey or molasses. It does something to my head, sharpens my mind to it until all I cna hear anymore is the sound of this boys breathing, until all I can hear it each halted breath and the thuds of my own heart beating in my chest.

My heartbeat, the stubborn thing, marches on like the disciplined thump, thump, thump of a soldier striding towards his fate.

It beats deafeningly loud in my ears, so loudly that I'm sure this boy must be able to hear it if only he would listen.

I hope he listens.

I can hear the despair in his voice though when he asks how I could be like her, how I could possibly be one of them, one of the rebels who I know now must be who got his mother killed. I watch on, not exactly in abject horror—I've seen too much bloodshed already to cry for a girl who tried to kill me, but I am horrified for the boy, somehow, can feel in the heart I forgot about that this isn't what he wanted. Or, maybe worse, that it's exactly what he wanted and something never should have come about, that he has the kind of soul that could have healed if the world would just have fucking let him.

But now he's holding a sword, and he's dug it into the back of a girl who didn't know when to stop fighting, and she's dead. But now, he's killed a girl, and there's no coming back from that. Even if he's the one who walks out of here, even if he's the Capitol's victor, his hands will always be red. When the blood washes away and the dirt gets scrubbed off his face, he will have decided his life was worth more than someone else's, and there's no coming back from that decision.

I would know.

I take a step back from her body, bring my bloody hand and run it through my hair, a nervous tactic that I always think I've kicked until I do it again.

"I'm sorry," I say, and I wish that my heart would stop beating like that, that I would stop feeling all this fucking anger and pain and anger and pain and an unwillingness from my body to fight either of the emotions. They play out across my entire face, across my entire body, refusing to give in to my force of will. "I'm— I fai—" I swallow, take a half step back. "We failed you." I shake my head, feel everything that I've felt this past year and more come over me tenfold, threatening to pull me under. "I don't," I shake my hair out, have to wonder if this is the moment, if this is the time, if this is what this boy wants or deserves to hear, but I think that I need to say it.

Or maybe, just maybe, I can't stand the idea of dying without ever having told anyone that the rebellion wasn't all the rebels fucking crack it up to be. Maybe I don't want to die without anyone having heard my story, selfish as that is.

"I was one of them, but I— I thought we were doing good. I didn't understand what war was when I was recruited, but the truth is the rebellion didn't make things better for anyone," I go on, and his shattered glass words are behind my eyes now, pricking at them and I'm so goddamned fucking terrified of being terrified enough to cry that I take another step away. "I didn't—I never wanted to be like her," I say, gesturing to the girl dead at our feet. "I was so tired of being blinded by the Capitol that I was blinded by the rebellion, let them take a grieving kid and turn me into a soldier."

I shake my head again, knowing exactly what it is to blame someone blindly for the death of a mother, knowing that my words won't be enough.

I say them anyway.

"But I'm not like her," I plead, needing this stranger with shared spilt blood to hear me, to see me, the understand. "I'm not blind anymore. Maybe that makes me worse, that I knew the rebels weren't all good and fought for them anyway, but I thought we were good enough."

I swallow.

"I thought we were good enough."

CANARY IN THE MINES

no attack

[Python]

Jan 19, 2020 3:31:12 GMT -5 Python said:

Persephone Vega, D11F, Attack 1, 1033

Persephone Vega, D11F, Attack 2, 1169

A wallflower with thorns was unheard of, but Persephone had to make an exception to preserve her life. The sword in her hand felt like an unnatural extension of her arm, a heavy weight dragging her toward the center of the earth. She knew she couldn't stop the bleeding with one hand while defending herself with the other. Wincing, she gripped the hilt awkwardly with both hands as one of the girls advanced again.

Everything about this was the opposite of what she expected. The girl smiling at her - as if cruelty was amusing, as if the irony of dying here was something to celebrate. Persephone couldn't comprehend that mentality. Poor, sheltered little girl thrust into war. Nobody here would feel sorry for her, and that was a terrifying thought.

What ever happened to empathy?

"You think the world will just let you crawl in the corner and forget about it?"

In the past, the world let her get away with it, and maybe this was a punishment for complacency during a war. The world was clearly different than what she had imagined in Eleven. Not everyone possessed a gentle heart. Not everyone was capable of human decency. This arena was full of savage children and victims alike, forced to become equals and claw at each other until the top of the food chain revealed itself. Persephone had never been a people person, and perhaps that was why she didn't understand anyone in this stadium.

It felt as if the other girl was mocking her. Tears and gods were not what Persephone would turn to before her death, or so she hoped. She didn't know how painful death was, even as the cut on her stomach continues to throb.

"I don't believe in anything," she admitted. "Why should I?" Somehow she managed to hold her sword up in time to protect herself. The clash of metal was unpleasant, sending shockwaves through the bones in her hands. Is this was war felt like?

"Everything about this is wrong."

Yet she swung.

[Persephone attacks Antigone d3f - sword]
pj2j07LKrUsword
Shallow Cut on Chest -- 4.0 damage

sword

[cameron]

grover d9m | 1118

as you swing, so does he
mysterious stranger, boy from three
his blade cuts through her back of crown;
it's not enough to bring her down.

you feel your face burn red with heat
not just from blood dripped to your feet
it's solitude, something long lost
you thank this boy from your exhaust

he has a look, cold on his face
his feet are planting him in place
you look at him, eyes cut and focused
so far in here, he's who you're closest

to by far; the rest run rampant
swords and screaming clash to dampen
all your words stuck in your throat
words you've tried to send afloat

you thought your song was just the same
but life's not honored on this plane
you cannot sing the siren song
that held your family strong so long

you know now the schemes have changed
what you've held is rearranged
you don't know shit about this boy;
he's thanked for stagnancy destroyed

feet twist you 'round, you're back to back
ready to go on the attack.
your eyes now linger on the one
who had unto your leg scission -

he is so small, so small but brave
to fight for what they all must crave
but you know you are sinking here
you've not long 'fore you disappear

dear grover, with your songs aplenty
will not be alive at twenty
maybe you'll still be evoked
on stages under guise of cloak

for now you know what you must do
the whitecoats up above know, too
you draw your sword once more with zest
and aim to finish out your quest

grover attacks andy maddox d7m
HWDDvNc|Y|sword
deep gash right forearm 8.0

sword

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

andy maddox | post five | 1017

andy.

He took a gash out of the boy's leg, surgical precision. He had to have at least nicked the femoral artery- the copious amount of blood that began to spill was warning enough. Andy had killed before, ripred knew. He'd slain men and women and everyone in between, children who were forced into the war same as him, just on the other side. He knew what the eyes looked like in their last moments: all helpless and clouded and afraid.

Maybe it was because, even as they gasped for breath, even as they ceased control of their mechanics, they were holding out hope that something was going to change. The bleeding would stop, they'd catch their breath, someone would swoop in and save them. Though the last thing Andy always remembered seeing, the last thing before they saw anything at all, was acceptance. All hope was lost. They would succumb to their wounds, their lungs were too tired to try. No one was coming to save them.

The boy reacted by ripping his own sword against Andy's forearm and he gasped involuntarily at the pain- "FUCKING SHIT!"

He stumbled backwards, eyes peeled on the boy now. He had training, too. Andy could tell just by the way he was standing; it was the way he'd been standing for quite some time now. Fear replaced itself with anger, and he didn't care how small he was. He didn't care what mistakes he'd made in the past: his pain now was more concerning. Call him selfish if you will, it was of no regard to him.

It was no longer as simple as him wanting to live; Andy wanted to hurt the other boy back, his teeth gnashing so hard he tasted blood, his face burning red, his eyes bulging from his face as he breathed through the pain.

It needed stitches; he could tell just by how it felt. Cut clean through the coveralls, the insulation of which was doing a fine job of absorbing the blood lost. Good, he thought, circling the boy, Don't let them know how badly you've been hurt. Never show weakness because predators attack the vulnerable spots. Despite the fact that it burned like acid running through his veins, he switched his weapon over to his right hand for a moment, tethered it to and fro.

Everything was fine. He was brave. He was not too little to fight. He was not a coward.

With a huff of air, bottom lip clung to by his teeth, he was one with the wind, spinning toward the eye of the storm, knowing it would be fine once he got there as long as he didn't mind getting a little wet.

( andy attacks grover )
HD4KkxVP1gsword
( 1017 -- Block -- 0.0 damage )

sword

[L△LIA]

[ D6F Maeve Idlewild | Post 3 | Attack 1 | 1053 ]

MAEVE. HARD TO BE SOFT tough to be tender "Maeve," Samiyuq repeats, hir voice coming into focus as if it had been lost at sea and were being pulled back in, slowly but surely. "Steady. My name is Samiyuq and I'm not going t—" A small slip of the tongue, but not small enough to be missed. "I'm not hurting you right now." Honesty is not always comforting. Maeve keeps her eyes closed as if that will save her from seeing the truth of the situation. "You can breathe, Maeve Idlewild, you've been doing it your whole life." As if she hasn't been refusing to see the truth this whole time. "Look at me." It takes a prolonged moment. A breath in. A breath out. Another. One eye opens first, just a fraction, peeking. I'm not hurting you right now. Such a large part of Maeve is stunned not to discover the point of Samiyuq's sword at her throat that there's not much left of her to feel guilty for being wrong. "Kid, they announced our names in front of our entire Districts and we're still here. Nobody here who doesn't already give a shit about you is going to be convinced to." Shaking her head ever so slightly, Maeve's denial swears otherwise. You're not dead yet, Maeve. This is twice now that you're not dead yet. "Not up there—" Somewhere in the stands is a peacekeeper that hit her harder than anyone on this field. No one down here has laid a hand on her, only them. Her jaw clenches stubbornly. "— and not down here." Maeve thinks Samiyuk might be a liar. She doesn't say it, but she feels it with every part of her heart that isn't too committed to fear to feel anything else. "You need to keep your head down or keep that sword up. There's no shame in either, but pick one." She's already taking a slow step backward, her head shaking back and forth no no no, as the challenge leaves Samiyuk's mouth. Pulse thumping in her ears, she doesn't know how to respond to someone telling her so clearly that the only thing she can think to do in her situation just... isn't a true option. "My name is Maeve Idlewild," she mumbles half-heartedly, face flushing, a voice in her head still insisting: just in case just in case just in case, "and I'm not sure I can do that." Another step back and another, faster this time, Samiyuq's voice is still gentle enough to betray itself. "Do your best. You might surprise yourself." There's a pause and Maeve turns around just before Samiyuq does the same, heading off in the opposite direction. "Good luck, Maeve." The words are quiet and the battlefield loud enough that she almost doesn't hear it. But she does. She thinks she might have heard it even if Samiyuq didn't say it, the same way she thinks ze hears her whisper, "you too," even though they're further and further apart every second. Boots pounding the sand, Maeve builds her slow pace up to a jog and then faster and faster still as she tells her feet to try to match the breakneck speed of her heart. Clearing her head, she chooses to ignore the advice she's been given and sticks with the tried and true. Run away from everything. Nearby someone loses another limb and she changes direction, where all too soon an entire body hits the ground and she turns heel as quickly as she can once more — Smacking face-first into a wall, Maeve topples into the sand as her sword skitters away with the impact. There's a long groan as she rubs a palm over her forehead and wonders if this is really the way she gets her first injury. Then the wall moves. Hand falling into her lap, her eyes go wide as she realizes that this wall has feet. Her jaw drops further and further as she dramatically looks upward in slow-motion to discover a boy so tall that his uniform looks shrunken on him, the hems of his pant legs far above his ankles and the sleeves ending halfway down his forearms. "Woahhh," Maeve gasps, stunned and shrinking into the laughable bagginess of her own oversized uniform, fully dwarfed from her position on ground. "Woah," he nods in agreement as she squeaks and flinches at the acknowledgment, as if she could duck any lower than she already is, "watch out, Tap Shoes." Eyes fluttering, she panic-blinks at his all-knowing words. Apparently he's not just huge, he's full on omnipotent. When he extends his hand, she recoils back so hard that the push of her shoulders into the sand piles it up enough to get into her ears. "Mynameis—" She blurts automatically, only to be cut off. "— Maeve Idlewild, right?" She can only nod, completely stupefied as she raises her hand up enough to point at him, as if to ask: Are you seeing you too?! She'd been told this would be an arena of children and monsters, not all-knowing gods. Leaning down closer to her level, he takes her tiny hand in his much larger one with the graceful swoop of a predatory bird scooping up a field mouse. "Era Altyr." He gives her hand a shake. "How's... How's the weather down there?" Baffled, she looks around at the way his shadow engulfs her completely and answers the only way she can. "A little overcast." It's surreal. She wonders if this is how religious books get written, if the people who claim to be prophets of Ripred have ever chatted about the weather with him. "What's the outlook up there?" "Clear skies," he casually replies. "Surprising, I'd've hoped Nature would throw a fit. You alright out here?" Before she can even contemplate an answer, he pulls her up to her feet effortlessly. Even upright, he towers a foot and a half above her. "You look like you've seen a ghost." "I've never seen a ghost as big as you." There are raccoons that live somewhere in the alley behind her house and she has always enjoyed joking around and calling them ghosts or telling spooky stories about them during sleepovers with her friends. The stories were usually followed with the whole group venturing out into the alleyway — armed with flashlights and maybe even a girl holding up one of Maeve's plastic dance canes like a baseball bat — in search of the phantom bandits that wreak havoc on the neighborhood dumpsters. Usually it didn't take long to find a bin with trash flying out into the street as if it truly were haunted. Thinking about the raccoons as hard as she can so she doesn't have to think about the much bigger, more difficult question — You alright out here? — from her new vantage point she finally notices the blood speckling Era's uniform and slicked down the sharpest part of his weapon. "Are... are you okay?" "Hm?" Still laughing over her ghost comment, it's not until he follows her gaze that he even seems to notice the blood himself. "Oh, I'm alright — a scratch is all. You should see the other guy — well —" This time she cuts him off, self-aware enough to call herself out. "It's probably better I don't," she mutters quickly as Era remembers that she is clearly not a soldier and perhaps this isn't the best circumstance for gallows humor. They share an unspoken moment of agreement: Yeah, she definitely should not see the other guy. Swerving away from the topic more nimbly than Maeve's own efforts to turn away from fighting, Era refocuses the conversation on himself. "I'm okay. Thanks." Attempting a half-hearted smile in response, it's too difficult when she can't forget the grave situation at hand and instead the corners of her mouth just give an awkward little wiggle before giving up pathetically. She takes his cue and changes the topic again. "How do you know about my tap shoes?" Shoulders tense and eyes narrowing ever so slighting with visible suspicion, she doesn't know exactly what there is in his knowledge of her to be wary of, only that... she is. "They took them away." Her eyes flicker down to her Capitol-issued footwear with a pang in her chest. He should call her Boots now. "I think most of us saw that stunt you pulled," she looks back up in surprise, despite the way it makes perfect sense. Somehow she'd forgotten that just because she might not be aware of someone, that doesn't mean they're not aware of her. The center of her world has always been herself and the things she sees, feels, and experiences. She rarely bothers to think much about things that happen after she turns away or leaves a room. "If there's someone's name, hobby, or family to know, it's yours. What's your cat's name, by the way?" "Killjoy," she answers a little too quickly, her mouth curving downward into a very compact, very petulant frown. It's all too easy to see how a girl like this would revenge-name an unruly pet for behaving out of line with her hopes and expectations. "Aw," Era sympathizes for the wrong team, even though some part of Maeve knows she deserves it. "Intense for a cat." "I am intense," she deadpans in response, lifting her chin to fend off any judgement that might be in his mind. She hadn't even realized she'd been ducking her head all this time. "Yeah?" Era smiles a wide, toothy grin. Sunlight haloing his head from behind, the brightness of it all can't help but to attempt to creep its way a little closer to Maeve, even as she stands in his shadow. "My Za had a cat when they were young, named it Tyrannosaurus. Apparently it did nothing but loudly meow at three in the morning." This time an actual smile flickers to life on her face. Now that sounds like her kind of cat... probably because it sounds an awful lot like her. She's so distracted by imagining herself mischievously meowing along with Tyrannosaurus in the middle of the night that she doesn't notice Era taking the opportunity to glance around and ensure that no one is sneaking up to attack them. "Mine just likes peeing on shoes and ignoring me," she laments without sounding anywhere near as annoyed as when she told him the cat's name earlier. "That's cats for you," he commiserates, Maeve giving him a wide-eyed nod of exasperation as if to say: Yup. Yup. Ohhhhh, brother, you're preaching to the choir! "I think they like people, just at their own pace." There's yet more nodding, as if in her one long week of cat parenting she has truly seen it all. "Sorry about your shoes." "Thanks. My sister was gonna get me new ones, but I..." Trailing off, there's not much else to say besides the truth. "I guess I don't need them now." Her words hang in the air between them for a moment because she's not wrong and he can't lie to her about that. "That's very kind of her." "Yeah." Still nodding from before, the motion has devolved into something achingly slow as she stares at her boots once more. "I mean, she sorta owes me." Whether he senses the full scale deadly angst trap she has just set up like a true professional or if he simply has enough good sense to pick up on the obvious deflating of her mood, Era side-steps the deadfall like an experienced soldier. "Sounds like your family loves you a lot." There's a smirk on his face that reminds her so much of Abiram's tell right before she's about to get tickled until she laughs so hard she forgets what she was upset about only a moment before. "Even if they make you take tap lessons." "They do," she concedes, the ghost of a tickle poking at her sides, "a lot." Swallowing down the feeling, she tries to cling to the joy at the memory's core instead of the sadness of her dads' absence, of that love's absence. "I don't really mind the tap lessons. I like how loud tap dancing is. It's, like..." There's a wistful sway that shifts her body, ever so slightly, from side to side as she thinks of the way the forcible CLACK-A-CLACK-A-CLACK of dancing would reverberate through her bones. That feeling was always the best part, it made her feel more shimmery than any sequined leotard she ever wore. It was a loud shimmer. "— demolition noise, but make it bougie." Laughing, it's obvious that Era realizes exactly how lucky Maeve is, even if she has struggled for so long to realize it herself. All she knows is family and the freedom to rebel over petty things instead of rebelling against the kind of oppression that has denied so many other people what she takes for granted. "Sometimes the noise helps quiet everything else," he says, somehow managing to relate to something in the story of her small, frivolous life. "Yeah," she agrees, as if she's the one being deep right now... as if the noise of her stomping out her petty frustrations and fights with her sister can compare to the noise of war. "A lot of times silence feels louder." Still, today at least, she's not wrong. A scream fills the air. The clanging of swords sneaks into Maeve's mouth, down her throat, and into her lungs, pushing everything else out of her until there is only that thought of silence and the promise of the noise all around that the silence will come. She swallows. After talking with Samiyuq, she knows no one will bother lying to her today. "Am I gonna be okay?" Era sighs, considering the undeniable truth and finding a lack of anything else to offer her. "I don't know. I know you're okay right now," he says as if it's a consolation prize, voice lifting with the word now. Staring helplessly at her sword laying in the sand, Maeve tries to find a way to distract herself again, but the only place her attention wanders is to his sword, covered in blood. "Am I?" She can't help asking, despite the way it fills the atmosphere between them with new tension. It's unfair of her. He's been so nice, but this isn't a nice question. "Okay right now, I mean?" "Well, no one seems to be showing up," he replies, politely smoothing over the blunt implication of her questions at the same time he answers them. "So I'd wager a yes." She looks back up, meeting his eyes with embarrassment over her accusation and no idea of how to thank him, although she knows she should. It's so easy to be afraid here, even after meeting someone who has been doing his best to calm her. "To be alright later though, you need to at least use a sword without hurting yourself. And I do know that your form sucks. You nearly cut your own leg swinging it in a circle like that." Blush deepening, Maeve squirms uncomfortably against this open, far more practical analysis of her odds of being okay. She's not a complete idiot. It's even more obvious to her that she's not a fighter than it is to everyone else; she didn't need him to say it. "How am I supposed to use a sword?" Even after her conversational misstep only a moment ago, the question still comes out dripping in sarcasm. She can't help it. "Beats me. I use knives." It's impossible for her to tell if his response is a joke or just a casual fact. After a few seconds of further contemplation he continues, "practice makes perfect though. Or at least performable. Is that a word? Whatever." Maeve shrugs. It sounds like a word to her, but there are reasons she only ever manages a B+ in English class and a lot of those reasons are extra credit papers. "As if I've ever practiced that..." "Well..." the tension from her blunt questions still hasn't fully left the air, but even before he finishes his thought she knows that's not completely her fault anymore, "first time for everything." Tossing his own sword to the ground, Maeve's eyebrows furrow and her wild confusion feels like a physical thing in her chest as Era walks five meters back before turning back around to face her again. "Come on," he instructs as other children literally fall apart all around them, "hit me." "That's not funny," she tells him as insistently as she can, gaping at the audacity. Spreading his arms wide, he smiles at her denial of... everything, probably. "Not a joke." His smile only makes her more unsettled and she doubles down, pulling a weird face that let's him know exactly how uncomfortable she is. "Ha. Ha. Stop. I —" Her inability to finish the sentence only makes things more awkward as Era lowers his arms and gives her a looks so serious her heart tries to drop right out of her body to hide in the sand. "Look, if there was another option, even a straw dummy, I'd gladly take that one." In some ways — like straw dummies and the whole concept of combat practice — she has no real idea what he's talking about, but in the only way that actually matters right now, she understands him all too well. She wishes she could pretend otherwise. "But this is where we're at." Marching forward, Era picks up the sword she dropped when she crashed into him and gently puts it back in her hands, adjusting her grip before stepping back again. "Best case? You shave a few inches off of my beard, and I go from an eight-and-a-half to a solid nine." This isn't happening. "Worst case?" He shrugs, as if shrugging is an appropriate thing to do right now. "I'm okay with it." Shaking her head as if she can shake the crazy out of it if she just keeps trying, Maeve's feet stay planted in her designated safe space. "What if I'm not okay with it?" "That's okay," he tells her and she believes him. "But to them?" There's a nod towards the greater fray of the arena that she keeps blocking out, keeps trying to pretend isn't there. This isn't happening, she tells herself again, ignoring every contradiction in her peripheral vision. "It won't matter." He's right. He's right about everything, but she hates it and that the only way she's ever known how to deal with things she hates is to block them out — with the noise of her tap shoes, with poorly conceived plots to bring all attention back to her so she doesn't have to consider other people's feelings, with blunt denial. "There's two questions you gotta know the answer to: 'Do you want to go home?' and 'What will you do about it?'" He smiles again, no teeth. He looks so sad. She wants to hug him, not fight him. "I know my answers, Maeve. You should choose yours." They've gone far enough with their honesty that she doesn't even hesitate to cross yet another line she shouldn't. "What are your answers?" She's not a very nice girl. She doesn't know why he's trying to do this for her. "...home hasn't been Home for a long time." Still, his smile does not falter, even as her heart breaks. Maeve's home is her life. She can't imagine any kind of alternative. She wants him to be able to find his home again almost as badly as she wants to close her eyes and open them to find herself back at her own. It's either/or. It can't be both. Face hot, she sniffs so hard in an attempt to keep her nose from running snot all the way down her chin that her grip on the sword falters. The sword wobbles again as she ducks her head to wipe the mess on her sleeve. The more of a wreck her expression becomes, the more her blade droops and even though she tries to pick it back up each time, she never manages to hold it quite as high as it had been the time before. She so desperately wants to be a bratty teenager and try to say something about how no one is ever as kind to her as he's being right now, but she finally has to admit how that's just a lie she tells herself to justify her frequent bouts of self-pity. All she knows is kindness. She can't look Era in the eyes after his confession and try to pretend that her entire life, every single moment of it, has been anything other than wonderful. Finally, sword only a foot or so off the ground, she gives it a half-hearted swing, but she can't bring herself to step forward and close the gap between them into any type of reachable distance. The gloomy, wilting blade doesn't come anywhere close. "C'mon," he coaxes, stepping forward so she won't have to, as if it's reasonable for this to be more difficult for her than for him. She can only shake her head again before her sniffles turn into open crying. Still, she doesn't drop the sword. "C'mon, Maeve," he insists again, knowing there's no time to be kind, but clearly unable to be anything else. Doing her best to straighten her shoulders out the way he wants her to, the only thing she can think of is Samiyuq's voice in her head, again and again. You need to keep your head down or keep that sword up. She knows it's true. You need to keep your head down or keep that sword up. She knew it was true before, but it feels so much more unavoidable now. It would be so easy to keep her head down and wait for someone to cut it off. So. Easy. ...except for the part where she doesn't want that. The tap-tantrum bickermonster of the Idlewild house has never been easy for anyone. Again, she hears it and this time she knows. You need to keep your head down or keep that sword up. There's no shame in either, but pick one. Sucking in a deep breath, she says the only thing she can think to when confronting the idea of having to fight for her life: "Your —" With one last massive sniffle she lifts both her sword and her head up high enough that she forgets her height difference with this person who only feels more monumental as the moments pass. "— name is Era Altyr." She swings.

ROUX. WE GET SO SCARED to be nowhere left alone "Maeve," Samiyuq says at the same time both of her fathers are whispering it at the television screen. "Maeve," everyone repeats, together, as if the combined steady insistence of their collective voices will coax her back to a level of calm she needs if there's to be even the smallest hope for her survival. "Come on, Mae," Abiram and Mordecai repeat over and over, for each other if not also for the desperate denial of the impossibility of getting through to their daughter on screen, "come back, Maeve. Maeve. Come on, honey." "Steady. My name is Samiyuq and I'm not going t—" There is a spike of hope and an immediate loss of it all at once. "I'm not hurting you right now." It is both easier and more difficult for Maeve's parents to cast judgement on this child of a stranger for not swearing to refrain from harming their own. It is easier because they do not know Samiyuq and they do not know anyone who cares for Samiyuq and so they construct barricades around their hearts and arm themselves with big lies shaped like tiny soldiers to fight for their right to believe that the life of the child they know and love is worth more than any other. It is also harder because they are parents and as such they also know that Samiyuq must have someone in the world who is watching and thinking the very same things about Maeve. "I'm not hurting you right now," Samiyuk corrects hirself and although it is a small consolation, it still takes up vital residence in the Idlewild family's otherwise empty hopes. The very moment those words are said, they catch the promise in their hands and hold it as tightly as a firefly so that it cannot escape. However faint this light, they will keep it in a jar with the lid screwed on tight until it goes out and then for a while after still, for as long as the appearance of death has the smallest chance of being confused with sleep. "You can breathe, Maeve Idlewild, you've been doing it your whole life." When things are this dark, even the smallest light can become salvation. "Look at me." The camera holds on Samiyuq's patient face. A breath in. A breath out. Another. It is no easy thing for people to look their fear in the eyes like this. "Kid, they announced our names in front of our entire Districts and we're still here. Nobody here who doesn't already give a shit about you is going to be convinced to." While it's true that there are things in life that can't be changed, Abiram and Mordecai Idlewild couldn't be prouder that they've raised a daughter who doesn't believe that hearts are one of those things. "Not up there —" Don't listen to her, they urge. "— and not down here. You need to keep your head down or keep that sword up. There's no shame in either, but pick one." Except, perhaps, about that. It's a relief to most everyone when Maeve begins backing away. "My name is Maeve Idlewild," but Roux's knuckles are white, her hands still clenched as if she is prepared to tag in as backup in the event that this retreat doesn't go well, "and I'm not sure I can do that." It doesn't get easier to know what to expect next as Samiyuq wishes Maeve good luck right before she disappears from the Idlewild family's television screen again, seemingly endless minutes passing without knowledge of what might have become of her. "No news is good news," someone murmurs, listless and unable to fill the words with the false cheer they desperately need. From her armchair, Holland almost tries for them, wondering if that might make her useful in this room she never should have invaded with her presence. Maybe she could be a voice of optimism for them... or maybe she should continue keeping her mouth shut in hopes of refraining from making anything worse than she already has. When the on screen footage finally cuts back to Maeve — crashing into someone with enough force that it sends her sprawling to the ground, instantly disarming her — Mordecai screams so sharply that everyone glances first to Roux, expecting such a high pitched shriek to have come from her tiny throat. It's all so sudden that no one has time enough to brace themselves for the inevitable strike from the much larger boy's already bloodied sword, everyone scrambling for hands to hold and shoulders to bury their faces in as they cry out with guttural, involuntary sounds of panic. "Watch out, Tap Shoes," he says to a gasping audience. The attack doesn't come, try as the cameras might to wait for it. Instead introductions are made, Maeve getting cut off before she can seize an opportunity to launch into another round of random fun facts about her life. "How's..."ERA ALTYR is flashing across the screen as they start to talk about... the weather. "How's the weather down there?" Literally. ERA ALTYR. ERA ALTYR. ERA ALTYR. Abiram gives the television a double take before sharing a confused look with his husband. This is too weird and they both want to question it, but at the same time they both also desperately want not to. Maeve is so tiny, so helpless on the ground with him stooped over her. Her sword is gone while he still has his in hand, but there's no denying that Era could take her out even without it. There aren't a lot of people in the arena who don't fall into that category of strength in comparison to her. "A little overcast," she replies, clearly just as baffled by the entire situation as her family. "What's the outlook up there?" "Clear skies," he casually replies. The cameras suddenly cut away, bored, and the uneventful scene is replaced with the death of Helena Crane and slow-motion footage of a sword slicing the side of her head away — a large swath of flesh, hair, and ear free-falling from her body. When it lands on the ground it causes the scene to appear as if the rest of her body has already been buried beneath the sand by a gravedigger too lazy to finish the job. Nothing gets easier to watch as the broadcast cuts to half of another girl's arm being severed and then soon after to an even larger exchange of blows between too many children for anyone watching in the Idlewild household to keep track of. Yet more limbs are hacked away as swords crack against skulls and there is yelling ("Get away from me!") and yelling (¡Vamos niño!, ¡vamos a jugar!") and screaming ("FUCKING SHIT!") and it never seems to end. It only gets louder, even when someone goes silent. Especially when someone goes silent. "Beats me. I use knives." Ajax Craine hits the ground, his foot chopped out from right underneath him, and then suddenly his lifeless eyes are replaced with Era Altyr's face. It's an awkward transition, too abrupt and obviously lacking context, but more important than whatever it was the Capitol decided wasn't worth airing is what they've decided is. He and Maeve are back on screen for a reason and it can't possibly be a good one. "Practice makes perfect though," he says, "or at least performable. Is that a word? Whatever." Maeve shrugs. It's truly bizarre to witness, considering how imminent an act of violence must be. This scene has been selected. Other parts have been edited away in a rush of this; not that snap-decisions and what remains is an unsettling depiction of Abiram and Mordecai Idlewild's daughter standing there so casually unaware that everything is about to change. This will not be another exchange about the weather, but she doesn't know that because her shoulders are relaxed and there is no tension in her expression. She doesn't know, but they do and it's impossible to warn her. Of all the horrors they have witnessed thus far, this particular combination of knowledge and helplessness is the most impossible thing to cope with yet. "As if I've ever practiced that..." "Well..." Everyone holds their breath as something in Maeve's face finally twitches with suspicion. "First time for everything." Era tosses his own sword to the ground and begins walking away, confusion twisting Maeve's face in every direction except the truth she's about to deny as he turns back around. "Come on. Hit me." Roux gasps louder than anyone because she has experienced the fewest hardships and has never had to sacrifice anything for the people she cares about. Her parents are slightly less surprised... but only slightly. Nothing could have actually prepared them for a stranger offering to step in front of a sword for the sake their child. "That's not funny," Maeve insists as he spreads his arms wide and smiles kindly at the fragile innocence he's coaxing her to leave behind. "Not a joke." "Ha. Ha. Stop. I —" Era lowers his arms and Abiram looks to Mordecai, because it's not just their daughter that has to make a decision in this moment. They, too, have to decide if the best thing for her is to hope she has the strength to lift her sword and fight for her life or if the actual best thing might be for her to decide to go in search of an easy death. Neither of them fought in the war, but they both still know too much about what it's like to have to give up crucial pieces of themselves in the name of survival. There are reasons that their children know the official history of Panem rather than that of their family and every day for the rest of their lives they will wonder if it truly was the best decision for their daughters not to know their fathers' real names. Do they want to root for their daughter to come home alive? Or do they want to root for their daughter to never experience the pain, the horrible shame of removing another person from existence for the sake of herself? There are no right answers, but there are certainly some that are more wrong than others. "Look," Era says, "if there was another option, even a straw dummy, I'd gladly take that one." Lowering his arms, he stops pretending that this is easy for him, that it's easy for anyone. Maeve deserves the truth; perhaps she always has. "But this is where we're at." Marching forward, Era picks up the sword she dropped when she crashed into him and gently puts it back in her hands, adjusting her grip before stepping back again. "Best case? You shave a few inches off of my beard, and I go from an eight-and-a-half to a solid nine. Worst case?" He shrugs. "I'm okay with it." Shaking her head as if she can shake the crazy out of it if she just keeps trying, Maeve's feet stay planted in her designated safe space. "What if I'm not okay with it?" Until now her parents had never been forced to consider if the things they wanted for their children were the same as what their children would want for themselves. Maybe all of the sacrifices weren't just theirs to make. It's impossible to say if Maeve and Roux would have agreed that living quiet lives on a quiet street full of other quiet people is better than knowing about how one of their grandmothers had once been a bhikkhunī and the other the captain of a ship that sailed between nations before the world decided that oceans should have different borders than shorelines. Then again, in a land of war, perhaps they all might have decided that a hint of anise in their garden's basil would be all they'd ever need to remember the women who helped plant it. Still, Maeve's words seem to echo back and forth between her fathers as they watch her contemplate which part of herself would feel the least terrible to lose: her life or her innocence. "That's okay," Era tells her, "but to them?" There's a nod towards the greater fray of the arena, but then the camera also cuts to a shot panning across the audience of peacekeepers and their perfectly matching uniforms, living their perfectly matching lives. "It won't matter." He's right. It's so much easier for a person to change themselves than to change the world around them. That war was fought. That war was lost. "There's two questions you gotta know the answer to: 'Do you want to go home?' and 'What will you do about it?'" He smiles again, no teeth. He looks so sad. That sadness is justified. "I know my answers, Maeve. You should choose yours." "What are your answers?" She asks him and, without knowing, also her fathers at home. They stare at her face on the television screen, desperately wishing they could do something to make her life easier the way they've tried so hard to do every other day of her life. Her parents' answers are the same: Their children will always have a home in their hearts, no matter where the girls end up in life, and so the only thing they can do now is to root for Maeve choosing what's best for herself. "...home hasn't been Home for a long time," he confesses and it's so obvious from Maeve's expression that she has no idea what that feeling is like that both her fathers can't help but cry with relief that, no matter what, they must have done something right. It isn't any easier to watch her lift the sword than it is for her to do it. For as small as she is, the trouble has nothing to do with her body and everything to do with her heart. Her first swing misses on purpose. "C'mon," he coaxes, stepping forward so she won't have to. "C'mon, Maeve." The way Era looks at her, he must know what in incredible thing he is doing, not just for her, but for her family. "Your name is Era Altyr," and no Idlewild will ever forget you.

help i'm alive metric | now or never now metric



[ attacks era altyr, sword ]

MkFLJY1qd2sword

[ 1053 — stabbed in forearm — 8.5 damage ]



[ Maeve crashes into Era; thinks she's met a god; gets a training session; tries to be as brave as he and Samiyuq think she can be ]

sword

[tick 12a / calla]

d12m jett davies | post 6 | no attack

j e t t

My blade finds a home in her back and she falls, hits the sand like a fallen tree and scatters the grains across my feet. I look away from it, the whole world doubling, tripling, in saturation, the sky spins and tumbles and starts bleeding in blues and greens and reds.

Everything rushes out of me in one fell swoop, in one swing of a sword, and I think I just feel

empty.

The sun is shining but it's a lot colder now.

I'm sorry, he says, and the voice drifts, the boy who isn't Joah. There's splintering when I look up at him, another person's blood on my hands. Because I used to run on false bravado, propaganda, a get them before they get you system, but I've just killed a rebel, a person, and the red stamped into my skin itches like hell.

My vision blurs and I swipe at my eyes angrily, feel the tackiness there and shudder.

The thing about Twelve is that everyone is fighting, all the time, for food and for clothes, for the privilege of being able to live somewhere that isn't a blanket on the street. Everyone ends up fighting for themselves in a place like that, so I don't think a lot of people had any fight left over for the war.

I know because I used to snitch for them, on them, told the keepers about hideouts and traitors and got a pat on the head for it.

It was different, maybe, because I grew up with a home, with a family and enough money that we didn't have to scrounge or beg or worry about anyone knocking down our door.

I went to school everyday, so did Joah, and our teachers told us that the rebels had already started destroying the other districts, that Thirteen was close to being completely gone. They told us that if we weren't careful, we would be next.

I knew the rebels weren't all good, he gets out, and fought for them anyway.

I thought we were good enough.

“No.” My sword arm is shaking but I raise it anyways, use both hands to point it at him and I think I'm yelling but I can't tell anymore, there's something wet on my face and my whole body hurts. I try to ignore the jackrabbit in my chest, try not to let my voice shake, because it isn't fair, “No, they're all the same. They never did anything good, they just took and they took until there wasn't anything left. They started a war they couldn't even finish. You attacked her, you can't be one of them."

Because he is everything I used to idolize. First my brother, and then the soldiers.

There's something so still about him, something simmering down beneath all of this chaos, and there's a tone, one that I used to recognize. I wait for him to tell me this is all a joke, to grab my shoulder and show me which rebel we go after next.

I told myself that I wasn't afraid of anything anymore, at least, not after all that's happened.

"You're lying. You can't."

I can't help it when the blade in my hand wavers.

no attack

[shrimp]

[8m era altyr | post 5 | ---]

era altyr
he/him | d8 | rebel | traitor

He should feel happier about this, triumphant about this. The sword slices through the air, catching Two in the forehead. Blood sweeps down in a sheet, and the smile drops from his face. Era watches, watches the boy scamper away, watches Squeak make his own decisions, and it is as if the war has moved on. The waves have settled back under the waters. He has won.

It doesn't feel like it.

Perhaps his decision will resonate: years from now, long after he is dead, will the Winner of the 2nd Hunger Games have used their voice for the better? Or will they succumb? Does what he chooses here mean anything at all? Will anything that he worked for, fought for, is dying for, be something other than a footnote in a history book?

He never aspired to much: there were no plans for what happened after the Revolution won. He wasn't like Cavalcade, who once showed him sketchbooks full of cakes, with cross-sections and tasting notes and an entire budget spreadsheet. He wasn't like Atlas, who studied her cards, shook hands with the right people and cared for even more, was becoming a leader in her own right. He just stabbed Keepers, killed Keepers, told himself that each one he cut down was ten fewer innocent deaths, ten more minutes to the Revolution's heartbeat. Every droplet of blood was so that someone else could have another breath, another laugh.

He didn't need to fly. He just wanted to look up one morning without the weight of it all—everything—crashing back down.

Alone, adrift, Era glances to the sky. The world: blue, static, heavy, does not blink back.

-/-

A solid thump knocks him back to his senses, but he does not move a muscle.

Below him—"Whoa."—"Whoa, watch out Tap Shoes."—"My name is-"—"Maeve Idlewild, right?" has run straight into his side and now lies in a heap on the ground. Era leans down, and with the sun on his back reaches out his free hand, gives hers a shake. "Era Altyr. How's… His eyes shift slightly. Her sword lies uselessly to her side, far out of reach. He hates that he has to check.

"How's the weather down there?" There is a beat. She is covered by shade. "A little overcast. What's the outlook up there?"

He checks again, just to make sure. "Clear skies. Surprising, I'd've hoped Nature would throw a fit." It is a half-truth: he hopes, but he is not shocked. Far off in Seven, a man finishes up the laundry, calls in his daughter—five years old and playing in the mud—in for lunch. In Twelve, a woman takes a swig of water, looks down at the vastness of the mines, prays for a day when her back will not ache. In Thirteen, his parents, dispatched to the Revolution's stronghold, now trapped, secretly alive, stare in horror at a television screen.

"You alright out here?" He is still holding her hand, and pulls her up. Standing, she barely reaches his ribs. "You look like you've seen a ghost." Or like you already are one.

"I've never seen a ghost as big as you before." And he laughs, the biggest one he's had in awhile. She doesn't know how true that is. "Are… are you okay?" She asks, avoiding his question. She glances instead to his clothes, to his hand.

"Hm?" he looks down as well, only just now noticing the speckles of blood dotting his shirt, pooling on the edge of a blade. His response is automatic: "Oh I'm alright, a scratch is all. You should see the other guy — well —" she finishes his thought. "It's probably better I don't." Maeve Idlewild is not like the kids to whom he read stories in the sewers. He backtracks. "I'm okay. Thanks."

"How do you know about my tap shoes? They took them away." She looks down, pointedly, at her boots: simple, black. Era knows enough about Eight‍'s industry to know how fragile they really are, how hurried the stitching is. He reckons they will fall apart when the last tribute falls.

"I think most of us saw the stunt you pulled. If there's someone's name, hobby-," everything "-to know, it's yours." He asks, as an afterthought, as curiosity, as a way to move forward, "What's your cat's name, by the way?"

"Killjoy." She frowns, lost in smaller frustrations. "Aw," it's a cute name, but "Intense for a cat." "I am intense," she retorts, meeting his gaze. He holds it, grins. "Yeah? My Za had a cat when they were young, named it Tyrannosaurus. Apparently it did nothing but loudly meow at 3 in the morning."

That gets a laugh out of her, and he takes a moment to check back in: a cat conversation is not one to be had when death breaks out meters away. He sees people fall: stabbed in the back, limbs sliced off, AK sliding unceremoniously to the floor. ("Mine just likes peeing on shoes and ignoring me.")
It is the type of skirmish he always tries to avoid, the one where skill never matters: just opportunity, just luck's temperamental grace. It is not a place for a child. ("That's cats for you. I think they like people, just at their own pace. Sorry about your shoes.")

"...I guess I don't need them now."

She won't. And he cannot tell her lies: it would be unfair to put that weight back on her. War-grown kids are dying left and right, those with twice the experience and more anger than fear. Era, damaged and hollow and more exhausted than he knows, is more well-off than most of them combined. "That's very kind of her." ("Yeah. I mean, she sorta owes me.")

Sometimes he is mad at his parents for a myriad of reasons, like when they accused him of not sweeping the rug while they themselves had tracked in all of the dirt; or when they didn't come home after one night of raids and refused to apologize, did not understand his concern; or when they told him to grow up when that was all that he was trying to do. He is full of wishes and regrets, and in the wake of their deaths he cannot go back to fix them.

"Sounds like your family loves you a lot." He chuckles. "Even if they make you take tap lessons." And they must be watching now, wondering why a giant has not yet cut their daughter down, why this conversation on tap dancing matters when others die around them. And they must be praying that it never has to stop.

"Sometimes," he responds, "The noise helps drown out everything else."

In the Center, imprisoned for eons, silence was deafening. It couldn't stop his heart from beating too fast. It couldn't stop time from fading away. He languished there, his world shrunken to four cell walls and the laughter of a Keeper. When he was finally free, it never felt like it: he would stay out until the shops closed and then pace the perimeter of his living room, count the steps as they clacked against the hardwood until his downstairs neighbor smacked a broom against the floor ("Shut up.").

"A lot of times, the silence feels louder."

A scream rings out. Swords clash in a chatter. It is an unpleasant thought, but—perhaps… Perhaps he's belonged here all along. (No, that's not quite right. But there is nowhere else for him to go, other than straight through.)

Reckless, Cavalcade thinks, a thousand miles away.

"Am I gonna be okay?"

He sighs, long, drawn-out. "I don't know. I know you're okay right now," as if being alive for this one moment is better than being dead in two. "Am I? Okay right now, I mean?"

He does not fault her for this. It is the human response. "Well, no one else seems to be showing up. So I'd wager a yes." She reminds him of IdleWilde, of their brusque speech, their skepticism.

"To be alright later though, you have to at least use a sword without hurting yourself. And I do know that your form sucks. You nearly cut your own leg swinging it in a circle like that."

"How am I supposed to know how to swing a sword?" Beats me. I use knives" (Quieter, Lighter, Faster—the kindest thing he can give to a Keeper is a quick death). He would think her reaction is almost funny had she been a new recruit, still in danger but not in a fight. But she is not. And he does not want her to die. How novel a concept.

"Practice makes perfect, though—or at least performable. Is that a word? Whatever."

"As if I've ever practiced that…"

He was never the strategist, but Maeve has a 0% chance of surviving as is.

"Well, first time for everything."

Maybe he can bump that up, just enough.

"Hit me." He is five meters away, arms outstretched, his own sword too far away.

"That's not funny." She is incredulous. So is he. "Not a joke." "Ha. Ha. Stop. I—"

His arms drop, the bags under his eyes feel heavier than usual. "Look, if there was another option, even a straw dummy, I'd gladly take that one. But this is where we're at." He is wrong, and he is right. He could march her right up to someone else, tell her to swing with her eyes shut. He could send her to the wall, where she grips her stance and hacks away at immovable rock. But a wall is too impersonal, another fighter too real—too likely to maim. And he is tired: his shoulders ache, his lungs hurt. Blood still runs through his veins.

He believes that this act is selfless, but he forgets that he can be selfish too.

"There's two questions you gotta know the answer to: Do you want to go home? and What will you do about it?" He smiles, and across the country his parents yell to deaf ears. Cavalcade curses and slips away from the crowd.

"What are your answers?"

His answer lies in the cracked sidewalks and smoke-filled lungs. It is in decrepit crypts and ashen bones. It is in the echoes of a prison cell, in the grocery lists that he writes three times over, in the steely gaze as he walks past.

"home hasn't been Home for a long time."

Era is not Wilde, who would've screamed at Maeve, called her names until she angrily picked up a blade. He is not Altas, who would've swayed her with leverage, with memories and hope ("Your sister still owes you those tap shoes"). He is not Cavalcade, who would have picked up a weapon and gone for the jugular, scaring her to fight. Even as Time slips away and their advantage crackles, he can only be himself..

"C'mon."
"C'mon, Maeve."

She picks her head up, and he feels a surge of pride.
She swings, and he feels the smallest twinge of dread.

"Ow."

[does not attack]

notes:
Ass-Kisser (AK): Ajax
Squeak: Catullus
Maeve Idlewild: Maeve Idlewild

appearance notes: 6'3", broad-shouldered and lanky, messy short dark hair, light brown eyes, tan skin and a light dusting of facial hair. The uniform is too small on him: it looks like he is wearing capris.

[gamemaker sloane ♕ kaяi ♕]

( harley sinclair | attack 5 )

There's a fire that burns within me.

It started off as nothing more than a whisper, but not it has consumed me whole.

And it is ready to wreak it's havoc.

As the boy's ear falls to the ground from the touch of my blade, I do not flinch, I do not smile. I simply stare at it until I realize what is truly happening. There's more dead bodies that begin to surround us. Not just bodies, but children. Children who had a life and a family and a home.

Children who deserved a chance to live.

But their life was taken before it even had a chance to begin.

Because of me.

Because of the boys that stand next to me.

Because of them.

I never understood my father's ramblings about the Capitol before. I thought they were old man tales meant to scare us, meant to keep us in shape. I fought because he told me to fight. I drove my dagger's through men's hearts because he asked me too, not because it was something that I wanted. I thought the stories were fabricated, exaggerated to fuel our hatred for the Capitol.

Now the proof is right in front of me.

And I realize just how wrong I was.

I hold myself a little higher, grip my sword a little tighter and smile. I would be there end. The vision that they see before they take their very last breath. I raise my sword to attack the boy again, but then I hear it.

"You."

And before I have a chance to turn around his sword is cutting deep into the back of my head, and a grunt escapes my lips. Cowardly. To attack when someone isn't looking. He must be one of the Capitol's pets, otherwise he would know better.

"You"I mock him and my eyes narrow. This is no longer the time to feel bad. This is the time to take the dogs down, and make a statement while doing it.

Maybe I'm not a monster.

Maybe I'm the hero, since I'm fighting for the right cause.

Or maybe, there is no difference at all.

( harley attacks ; catullus brown 3m with sword )
9sgmirA_ifsword
( dg on right forearm - 8.0 )

sword

[Noah Vau - D2 (Cato)]

Sigrun Vau District Two

Sigrun | Post Five | Attack Two | 1135 I don't really know what else to do, but I stand wide eyed watching Tector pull my blade out of his stomach. At first I don't really think much of it because everything is fast. He's stumbling around and tying to regain his balance before tripping into Emmi. It's nothing major, but more people are dying, and I'm glad that I'm not one of them right now. I'm grateful that everything is all coming together as quickly as possible. I still don't know why I'll fight or how I'll even make it happen. My mind is racing as a pool of blood forms beneath Tector's feet. I've hurt him. I've done this to him, and part of me feels like he deserves it for not wanting to fight. This was all an accident for trying to escape. They should've known it would've never succeeded. They should've known nothing good would come of it, yet I keep moving around this time I've got my blade ready. No more accidents. No more slipping up. I don't want to help him. I don't want to help anyone, but I have to do what I have to do despite it being this important. I want to go home alive. I want to see my family again, but I'm not ready to fight because I'm being forced to. I'm not ready to prove myself anymore. I look around trying to take it all in. I can help a friend in need, only he's not a friend. Both are people I just met, and I would really prefer it if they simply ran away and left me alone, but I know that I can't do that now. Tector's wound is bad. He's taken a beating, and maybe I can finish it off and make it worth it. I've started this by accident, and all I can do now is hold myself accountable and not make anymore mistakes. Trying to escape was foolish. I take a breath and look at him. I'm not sorry for wanting to live, but I'm sorry for what I'm about to do. "That looks fatal. Let me help you." I promise to myself to make it quick. I pray for a quick end hoping my blade meets his heart.

OOC notes go here

[googlefont="Rock Salt:400"]

Sigrun attacks Tector | Sword

yLEdiHKgZisword
1135 -- Deep Gash on Right Bicep -- 8.0 damagesword

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

[antigone boyé | attack #4| ----]
act ii. scene i.

(exterior – more bodies fall, aisha finding her strength against another boy. still struggle shows between antigone and peresphone)

persephone. i don’t believe in anything. why should i?

(persephone’s blade catches antigone’s wth a clatter. antigone slides her blade back)

persephone. everything about this is wrong.

(she advances, blade glancing antigone’s chest. antigone hisses as the blood erupts onto the sand)

chorus. no one asked you to make the argument for a rebellion; no one asked you to stand for the men who stepped forward, those that believed a better day came through fire and blood. you weren’t the girl who had an answer for the reason why so many brothers had to die. why did young boys have to be the sacrifice that settled a score? it seemed to antigone that their blood was sought so highly for the simple reason that it wasn’t worth much of anything at all.

choragus. she looks at the girl from eleven now, sidelong glances that she wishes could cut her to pieces. persephone came from a world unlike her own, and though she would never know what that world was, antigone believed in her heart that it couldn’t understand the hurt she felt. years had taken a young girl’s flesh and rendered it hardened steel; fate had cut out her heart and replaced it with a wind-up box with a key. it turned so much as she willed it. it couldn’t beat for anyone else, couldn’t be hurt so much as made useless.

antigone. of course all of this is wrong.

choragus. they all liked to think they were at the center of some story. that their lives, if they could last just a little bit longer, would serve some greater purpose for humanity. they would never say that her life meant less to them, but the implication would hang heavy over head. she wasn’t stupid, rarely subtle and couldn’t be bothered to want to know someone like that. better they tell the truth, that their world was narrow, and she would believe them.

antigone. we didn’t get here because men are compassionate.

chorus. she can count on one hand the people who showed her kindness. her brothers, tough as they were, that sacrifice everything for a cause that traded their bodies for a failed bounty. her father, who’d been left sick and invalid through years in a job that left him without time for his wife, or his children. her mother, who’d once felt freedom under a hot summer night, who’d danced to songs under a hazy yellow light, who’d weep at the sight of her daughter on the television screen – not because of her striking at another child, but that there was so much pain on her baby’s face that she couldn’t bear it.

choragus. antigone believes that she died back in that bunker outside of three. she would’ve made a beautiful corpse, pulled from the rubble after the roof collapsed. she could’ve been laid out with her brother lazrus, and gone to hell. she wasn’t hopeful enough to believe in heaven for either of them, for all the blood that was on both of their hands. but at the least, she wouldn’t have to go alone.

antigone. we got here because they don’t have space for us. because no one’s going to make space for us. we never mattered then, and we won’t now.

chorus. antigone never had the privilege to feel as though her life had mattered more than another’s. which wasn’t to say that her parents hadn’t loved her and tried to give her the trappings of a restful youth. she faced the sort of bare-knuckled poverty that defined every beat of her heart. one that drew out the years to have her ask questions of liberty, of why even the words that she spoke could draw such hatred and anger that men spat and laughed – that something so little as her body could define such a hatred, that they wanted her not to exist at all.

choragus. she didn’t believe that the game they were forced to play would change any minds. she didn’t think that somehow they could still raise the rebellion from the ashes. it wasn’t going to bring her brothers back and it wasn’t going to have her know how to feel, striking down a girl she'd never met, that hadn’t done a thing to her. but she refused to vacate her space here. she refused to let whatever morals men had made to make her feel as though her sacrifice deserved more sacrifice, and that that was the only solution for a girl like antigone.

[antigone boyé attacks d11f persephone vega with her sword]
CFVrrNZjQssword
[result: 1062 -- Block -- 0.0 damage (Sword) ]

sword

[Kire]

[3M Catullus Brown, post 8, 1164]

Catullus Brown
district 3 male

I'm swinging with a fervor I couldn't have imagined before. This wasn't like me, raised by my parents to be well mannered and educated, this was something closer to the people I now faced. Driven by violence and the need to revolt, trying to prove a point that never needed to be proven. The rebels all fought a losing war and it cost everyone. Now I'm fighting against these people and pretending like I might actually have a chance.

The bite of my blade into flesh is beginning to become less and less surprising. I do not revel in it, as Nutso did, but I do not cringe as much anymore. I leave a damp patch in her hair, stealing a few strands on the point of my weapon. She whirls on me, feral animal ready to bite. Her weapon is stained with blood, but so is mine.

"You," I realize she heard me as she mocks me, repeating my single word. It wasn't meant for her but I don't think she knows that. Not that it matters anyway. I'm here, trapped now in this fight that I stumbled into, and the only knowledge I have is that I might have someone to turn to.

The boy I shielded had swung to cover my back, his own weapon swinging to bite deep into Pip's arm. We are fighting on two fronts, each trying to hold one back as we are chipped away at. I can't see what is going on between the two of them but I hear the clashing of swords and a loud swear. I hope it's Pip that is struggling.

I have my own problems to contemplate, though, as a pissed off girl lashes out for me with deadly aim. Desperate to save myself I throw up my sword but too high. She cuts underneath, steel driving into the flesh of my remaining arm. I try not to howl but some sound still escapes my lips. I am fighting a losing battle here. Stupid, you don't know how to fight. She did, though, and I had known that before I had even swung.

Still, I was trapped now. I couldn't keep hitting and running because eventually I would have every sword pointed at me. As it was, I could only hope that Nutso wouldn't be able to find me in this mess. Then again, maybe he would be able to deal with this rebel girl.

He wasn't here, though, and I would have to just be glad for it. One less weapon to skewer me, one less voice to taunt me. Small and weak as I was, I had to fight my own battles.

Hissing against the pain, I wound myself up and went for her.

I don't want to die.

Not to you.

[Catullus attacks Harley Sinclair with Sword]
ONt1luBj3Ssword
Shallow Cut on Right Thigh -- 3.5 damage

^{Legend
Nutso: Ajax
Pip: Anderson
The girl: Harley}

sword

[mat]

Jan 19, 2020 21:27:44 GMT -5 mat said:

ram tapsol; attack four; 1035

ram tapsol; attack five; 1125

[googlefont="Srisakdi:400;"]

ram tapsol
-=+=-

Limb after limb sunk to the ground, but it only takes a small swipe at the girl's body to finally bring her down. It's funny to Ram how that works. Back in Eleven, men and women would lose their hands or feet, but it was exhaustion that finally did them in. Not an infection, not blood loss, not the innumerable possibilities that could've went wrong with the injury. Just a simple end in their will to live.

Now, two lie on the ground in front of him. One, a shadow of a friend who could've used his help as Ram retreated to vomit in the corner. She might still be alive had he just held it all in. Two, a girl who, in theory, should have been a friend under any other circumstances, or at the very least a neutral acquaintance. He watches both as they remain like statues, just to make sure he doesn't turn his back and they rise back up, as if they are the members of the apocalypse.

They don't, but it doesn't make Ram feel any better. In fact, it makes him feel worse, more nervous than before. By his hand, or his sword which is connected to his hand, he overtook the dark-skinned girl and sent her to the gates of heaven or pits of hell. Given the fact that moments before she'd killed another, Ram could only assume the worst for her.

He fails to build the courage to walk past them. They rest on the far side of the arena, separated from the dozen or so tributes still standing. They barricade him in, two pieces of the girl's hand spread out on the left. Associate's leg dangling a few feet to her right. No way out, to continue the battle, unless he walks over them like overgrown weeds that found their way into the pathways of Eleven's fields. Obstacles. Hassles in his way.

It leaves him sick to objectify humans this way. How else can he describe them, though, when the concept of being a barbarian is all that's left.

Each one of them standing is a pawn still playing the game. Everyone lying on the ground is a weed.

Ram stares at her. The one he killed. One of the weeds.

Screams in the distance are like needles poking holes through his ears, commanding him to move on.

Inches away from her now, he hesitates. The weeds. Remnants of dandelion weeds would grow at his doorstep as summer died down and autumn began to make its turn. They'd turn from yellow to a puffy textured, greyish-white weed. Unhealthy for the grass and the flowers, his mother would send Ram out to pick them.

{"Blow them out like candles, Ram. Make a wish. Legend says your wish might just come through."}

He lets a deep breath into his lungs. Ram always managed to get each of the white specks out in one big blow. He exhales in the direction of the girl, watching the grains of sand surrounding her push away ever so slightly.

"Find a good place, whoever you are, and be free."

Wherever those little white bits of dust blow away to, Ram prays that it's better than here.

He prays that it finds its way to paradise.

Taking his left boot, he drags the blade out of her remaining arm, careful not to get any blood on the bottom of his shoe. There's no need for a weapon in paradise.

He doesn't weep this time. His blood, his sweat, and his tears already poisoned them enough, no need to rub salt on the wound.

Ram crosses the line of their limbs, their bodies, and their blood, refusing to look back.

-=+=-

It's like stepping into a new galaxy. The world feels brighter and lighter with every step he makes away from his assailant and associate. The burden begins to fade, and so do the groans of the spectators. Nobody watches a mature film with the intention of following the storyline. No, they only care for the rush that they receive while viewing. These spectators did not want the 2nd Hunger Games ft. Sympathy and Tears, they craved the 2nd Hunger Games ft. Punishment and Blood.

Ram makes each move carefully, checking left, right, and occasionally behind him to ensure he's not being followed. He witnessed what happened to the assailant when she struck without checking her surroundings. Now, she's dead and floating away to a fresh start.

There's at least a dozen, perhaps even fifteen, people still standing, speaking, and questioning each swipe of their blade before they make it.

He's unsure of where to wander next. Up ahead, several spar in what feels like a bloodbath of its own. To the left, a girl falters. Soon enough, she might fall too.

And to his right, a boy who exceeds Ram's height, is dressed in blood from head to toe, all alone as another moves on from the encounter.

Him. Get him.

Ram's wielding hand twitches, unready to run up and land a blow, unsure if he even wants to. A little girl, hair short and curled, watches on. She's an easier target, albeit a target that would reveal Ram's cowardice.

Him.

An easy kill does not make the road back home any easier. And besides, air is running thin in the Colosseum. There's only so many gusts of exhalations left for Ram to make for the weeds before he eventually runs out.

His aim redirects to the boy, whose arm appears to be wrapped from a wound. Here they go again.

Welcome to Act II, Rammy boy.

Their eyes lock onto each other's, a tear once again beginning to drive down his face. He'd dreamt of finding people who he shared a common experience with. People who would understand him and be willing to call him his friend. Unwilling murder is not the type of experience Ram would suggest to achieve that.

Sorry.

He only manages to mouth the words before letting his sword slash at the boy.

Ram knows better by now. It's the Hunger Games. Apologies are implied.

[ram tapsol d11m attacks era altyr 8m; sword]
3nNdjYA9g8sword
[1125 -- Shallow Cut on Right Calf -- 3.5 damage]

sword