we move fast & then we crash. kenji blitz.

[✨ zozo.]

These tributes are all show-offs. Glaring teeth and bulls-eyes, maybe if I was smart enough I'd give them something to be afraid of. I'd rather be an honest wallflower than pretend I'm something I'm not. Steel, made up of wilting stems and fragile glass. So I stick to my corners and my silence, back pressed firmly against the cool touch of the wall. I like the feeling - stable, secure - practicing knots over and over and over in my hands. Doubt they'll do me any use, if this arena has water I'm done for. Drowning I can do. But swimming? Might as well tie my limbs together and throw me to the deep.

I drop the rope, rubbing my raw palms together to try and stop the burning. My muscles still ache from learning how to hold a sword with Emmett Le Roux and I keep thinking about the boy from Eleven who sat across from me in the dining hall who volunteered, above all crazy things in this world. Who'd want to volunteer for this? Who'd throw themselves to this pack of glittering wolves, unafraid of baring their teeth and backing you into a corner? Who'd put their hand up and say yeah, I'll take a gamble on my own life?

Maybe he's something worse than a wolf. Maybe he's a predator that makes wolves shiver. And if the wolves fear their presence, what chance does a little mouse like me have?

The wolves come howling, one joining me by the wall. 

"Not regretting it, are you?" I ask him, glancing at the 5 stamped to the sleeve of his training shirt. "Volunteering?"

[lance]

KENJI

There's an itch in your brain just waiting to be scratched. It's nothing new - been there ever since before Reaping Day, actually - but slowly, surely, frustratingly, you can only watch and endure as day after mind-numbing day passes by with the speed of a lethargic snail.

There are some that would make the most out of each and every moment offered to them by the passage of time. Those that would try and stretch each second to fill in a lifetime's worth of memories suddenly cut short in the two weeks allotted to them. You didn't fit that. You never liked letting wounds fester - you'd sooner rip the bandage off and be done with the whole affair. Why bother parading you around for two weeks, sticking you in a center full of equipment as if two weeks were going to be enough to bring you up to the speed of the Careers that had trained for life or the rural tributes that knew fifty different species of plants like the back of their hand.

But spending your time throwing punches and clashing steel gets repetitive when there's no fire behind it. No matter how much you want to taunt the trainers into a fight worth having, you're not that stupid - who wants their ass kicked in front of all of their rivals before the Games even started? - you have to make do with what you can get.

And right now, what you can get is a bruise on your cheek, three more across your torso, and the lethargy that accompanies an adrenaline crash as you make your way over to the ropes station. You'd told yourself you'd try everything at least once; why not see if your fingers were as good at creating things as they were breaking them?

"Not regretting it, are you?" Even before the girl you'd never spoken to before today - complete with a patched 8 on her uniform that otherwise is identical to your own - clarified her comment, you knew what she was referring to. "Volunteering?"

It's a good question, one that you're still trying to figure out yourself.

So you shrug. "Didn't when I raised my hand back home," you say, focusing on the rope in front of you. "Still tryin' to figure out if that's how I still feel or not."

You break your gaze, matching it with the girl's. "What's it to you?"

NAKAMURA