turned to me and said don't sway [diplomocera+hg+troupe]

[WT]

When the storm comes, you dive.

There's no thought to it, no decision-making process of any kind; the world around you roars and instincts millennia older than you can comprehend—millennia older than even your creators, however highly they like to think of themselves, can truly comprehend—tell you: Water is safe. Water is home.

The trouble is that every other Flying Diplomoceras in the vicinity agrees.

There are only a few of you at first, down at the bottom of the pond where the water roils the least with the force of the rain, but by late morning you're packed in. Once in a while someone extracts themself from the mass of tentacles and shell to try the surface; you never bother, because they always come rocketing back down, and as uncomfortable as the lower section of the pile is, you're happier shielded from the rougher waters above. There's nothing for it but to wait, and wait you do, as the water around you tints red but fails to smell of blood and the light filtering down from above shifts and strengthens and fades. Others begin to clear out earlier, but you stay put until well into the next morning, when at last you see clear sunshine coming down from above.

You might have stayed even longer—now that it's emptier, the water is comfortable again—but for two things: there's nothing to eat down here, and nothing to do.

The first problem is easy enough to solve; the storm turned the ground as far as you venture into a morass full of easy, disoriented prey, and it barely even takes searching to snack as you meander. So meander you do as you try to solve your second problem; there are thorns in the wind today, but as long as you pull your head in a little your shell and leathery wings are tough enough to weather the storm just fine. When you're not investigating the critters crawling in the mud, you soar upward like that, half to stretch your wings and half to cast a wider eye on your surroundings.

That's how you find the humans. You change course immediately to speed toward them; this small group looks like neither the individual visitors nor the scientist teams you're more used to, but whatever their purpose is, humans are never boring. Maybe they'll give you a contraption to take apart or a maze to solve—you haven't done one of those in a while, and as content as you've been in this new home, you miss the sheer joy of the challenges as much as the fish you get when you solve them. Maybe they'll let you see the shiny things they're holding! Maybe—

One of the humans shouts in your face.

Affronted, you wave your tentacles and swing your body around to smack him. You know better, but yelling at you is against the rules too and he started it, so maybe you'll get a fish after this anyway.

Waffle [Flying Diplomoceras] attacks D5M Kenji Nakamura, blunt
uRiZlwkyj8blunt
[Block - 0.0]



title song is "Dig Your Fingers In" by Esben and the Witch.

blunt

[lance]

"You're alive," Steel had choked out, disbelief only one of many emotions running on her face. "You're really alive."

You understood her confusion. A night and the better part of a day later aboveground, and you still didn't really understand either, beyond the basics. You had died. You had woken up belowground with a boy you knew and a girl you didn't. You'd fought, bled, lost an appendage, and killed. And that night, their faces had shown in the sky, but yours hadn't.

"I watched you die," she says, and Ripred, it doesn't sound any less weird when someone else is saying it instead of you. You hadn't just lost a fight, you'd been killed. Murdered. Eliminated from the Games of hunger and the game of life alike.

Except you hadn't.

"I watched them take you away. I heard your cannon. I-" She broke off, and you can almost imagine seeing it from a third person view, like you might have back home. Your battered, broken body, blood flowing from a half-dozen different wounds, eyes fluttering to stay awake.

You remember her cries, her desperate pleas for you to stay, to not die. You decide not to mention that.

"What happened?" There's a softness to the question, a carefulness. A desire to respect boundaries while also maintaining a sense of genuine curiosity. No, more than that. A curiosity born from-

You exhale as you realize. Fear.

"You don't have to tell me, but-" But even as she broke off, you'd already decided. If the situations were reversed, if you'd been left alone only for your dead ally to reappear after two days in an attempt to save your ass from a trio of scary fuckers, you'd be more than a little confused too.

"- but I don't know what's going on. And it scares me."

You don't know either. Not entirely. But you have an idea, and, well. As you decided earlier, if you were in her shoes, you'd want to know what happened to.

So you take a deep breath, and slowly, almost shakily, you recount the story of what happened after your not-death at the hands of the boy from Six.

---

You awaken to pain. No, not that kind of discomforting pain - that you're more used to at this point.

No, this isn't a dull ache. This is sharp, fiery, like half a hundred paper cuts just cut into your exposed flesh-

You sit bolt upright in a start. When the pain does not dissipate with the sudden return to consciousness, you blink, rapidly trying to expel the last vestiges of sleep from your eyes. Instinctively, a hand goes up to rub your eyes, then your cheek-

And you freeze when you touch wetness. Slowly, almost robotically, you remove your hand from your face, to find your fingers coated in crimson.

So you say the only thing that comes to mind.

"What the actual living fuck?"

It is almost disturbing how quickly you get to your feet and place your hands around your weapon after that. Not the tiny little knife you'd been gifted way back when in the catacombs, but the rock thing with the handle that you'd used when you, well...

The point is, you've woken up and immediately had to fight something or move right off the bat more days than not in the arena. Though only one before now had ever been in response to something threatening, you know all too well what could lie on the other end of dreamworld every time you close your eyes.

And then you see it. Something strange, something flying, something that is definitely not friendly.

Anger floods your system. You knew you'd have to face mutts eventually - they're a staple of every Games you've ever seen on the television, and the fact you hadn't seen one yet was quite frankly surprising - but you'd never expected that one would happen to slice you up in your goddamn sleep.

So you only do what's natural.

You yell at the damn thing.

"Hey, you ugly fucker up there!" you call out into the sky. "Yeah, I'm talking to you! Are you too scared to fight me when I'm awake? Have to wait until I'm asleep? Come on, fucker!"

The bait works, and suddenly you realize that perhaps taunting a muttation when there's still plenty of tributes out there to worry about perhaps isn't the best idea you've ever had. But no matter - the mutt dives, and you brace yourself to receive it.

Too well, perhaps, for when it comes in for the strike, you swing your rock thing to meet it. Though you fail to deal a lasting blow, neither does the thing - the weapon takes the full brunt of the strike, sending tremors down your arms but failing to break or even bruise your skin any further.

You grin, the same grin you got when you faced down Emmett in the catacombs. This was a fight. This was the life. And though it wasn't human, you had an idea that it wouldn't be difficult to summon the motivation to turn that flying whatever-it-was into a smear on the ground.

"Hey Steel!" you call out to your ally, without even so much as bothering to look in her direction. "Help me take down ugly here, please?"

When the mutt dives down for a second time, this time you're not just ready - you're more than ready. And once it comes within range, you swing, aiming not for defense, but for offense instead.

This'll teach you to wake me up.

kenji attacks waffle; spicy geodude thingy

4AsdjqI8fwspiked blunt

14039 -- STABBED IN CHEST -- 9.5 damage

spiked blunt

[✨ zozo.]

I dream of a dark cavern, of Nikolai and crossbows, of a floor littered with gems and a dancer lying still on the floor. I dream of monsters piling on top of me as I suffocate, of factories collapsing, of polaroid pictures and a swirling sky of flowers. When it all becomes too much I drag myself out of my dreams and gasp for air in the night, only to be swept back underneath my fatigue and pulled into more dangerous visions.

My last dream is of Dad standing in the dark cave Kenji described, a knife pressed into the back of his skull as I shake with the walls that collapse around us both.

I might have screamed as I woke, were Kenji not already yelling into the storm. A sharp pain stabs me as I turn over clumsily, hissing as I clutch my palm and pinch at a thorn that pricked my skin. With a sharp jerk of my fingers I yank it out and wave the pain away by my side, no time to waste with the monster than flaps its wings above us.

Still drunk in fatigue, I sluggishly haul myself upwards and kick my boots to life - "I got it!" I holler above the wind and the shriek of the monster, jumping up into the sky with relative ease. Every day with the boots becomes a little easier, finding the balance and aerodynamics I lacked in the bloodbath come naturally with each venture into the sky.

From above the high ground provides an advantage, but the wind becomes louder and louder the higher I rise. "Kenji?!" I yell, the chill of the night swirling around my billowing cape as I try to gauge where the beast is. In the dark, all shadows look the same and every slight movement of a petal could mean danger. "Tell me where to throw!"

Out of sight and out of earshot of my ally I grit my teeth and listen out for the sound of the beast instead. Silence, too much of it. Anxiety bubbles in my chest, every moment I spend hesitating is a risk to Kenji on the ground. I hear nothing but the wind - and then a sound I can only assume is the beast catches at my ears.

I aim below and throw a knife blindly toward the night, its usual iridescent glow tumbling into nothing but black.

steel accidentally attacks bird, throwing knives 1/10
QgI3L62Tdgthrowing knife

Shallow Cut on Cheek -- 3.5 damage

throwing knife

[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

bird ivy

You fear death all the damn time because you're so content with being alive. I've been there, yeah, I've died, seen the shit that happens and now that I'm here again — do I even want to be here? It's so empty. So void. And yeah, being alive is alright, but it's not the magical moment I thought it would be. Callum is here and yeah, it's nice to have some company again, to have the undying scent of sick back — but I know that I'll never be the same.

The sun sets and rises in a different way. It's almost like the night rises and falls instead, and that dawn feels like how the night used to. Just as dull and dark, the stuff of nightmares that forces children to hide under their bedsheets in fear. Being alive feels more like a curse than a blessing because it fills like silence is everywhere around me, breaking only for voices but then coming back even silenter, even stronger. And there's no escape from it, I'm absorbed into it, controlled by it and unable to beat it.

I guess this is what I signed up for. A volunteer, yeah, how stupid of a move was that in hindsight?

I mean, I suppose I have achieved my goal of getting lost. I've lost everything I've ever known, including everything I've ever loved. And for some reason, I don't think there will ever be a chance to feel that golden feeling of getting to love it for the first time all over again because when you're a shell of a person, all hollow, all fragile — you're even easier to break.

And no matter how hard the Capitol might want to try, the dead will always stay dead. A void doesn't become un-void just because authority wants it to. A void is just as unforgiving as death itself, because the void is death's creation. I place a hand against my chest to feel my heartbeat, and I feel it, I feel the pulse in the palm of my hand but it feels more like an echo of something that once existed than something that still exists. Like the voices that got carried through the catacombs until the end of eternity, my heartbeat feels like it has lost all the meaningful parts. It's punch has been replaced with a softer touch.

Maybe Hellemine should be here instead of me. Maybe I was fighting for a second life without realising it'll never exist in the way I want it to. When Callum and I move onwards, I see the life bouncing in his footsteps and I follow behind like a ghost. So cold, so full of nothingness.

A sequel never is as good as the original.

We come across two tributes and a mutt. And maybe if I still had an ounce of my former self left inside me, I'd try to let us all get out of this alive. But an empty heart beats in my chest and the butterflies in my stomach don't exist anymore, I don't have a care in the world because I've died and the life I've been given is somehow worse than the hell I woke up in yesterday. I'm sorry, Helle.

The girl throws her knife in my direction and it cuts across my cheek. The dead never rest in peace.

I don't even know peace anymore.

[ bird ivy attacks kenji nakamura ; knife ]

9oCCtt0x|_knife

[ 2010 -- Shallow Cut on Left Thigh -- 3.5 damage ]

knife

[pogue]

C A L L U M    L E A R E

He sees Hellemine's face lay itself to rest in the sky, eyes just as piercing and mystical as they were when she had danced through the hallways of the training center, called for his name and his company.


He'd been haunted by the ghosts in the walls, then.

He wonders if she had seen them, too.

He wonders if she's gone to join them now.


I hope you rest easy, Helle. Whatever that may entail. As his eyes watch the anthem flutter and dim and the night take over again, that same selfishness that had been resting in his gut rises and lodges itself into the bruised space between memory and future. It's a wicked thing, that when it bubbles and pops from gut to brain he can't feel his hands shaking anymore, no longer feels the weight of this world and the one beyond resting on his shoulders, no longer sees the bloody armor that coats his skin. He's discovered that, when he is selfish, he is focused. The heartbeats don't count, the regret doesn't twist and turn knife into stomach, the fear doesn't swim in his veins.

When he's selfish, it's like he goes back to being himself.

Back to before the games.

To ignorance, to naivety.

He wishes there had been more faces that stared down at them from the sky, just not Bird's.

Maybe that is okay.

He can't stop staring at her, even as the sunlight begins to fade and the darkness ebbs and flows all around them, filling in the vacant spaces left as the forces of bloody red water begins to surrender back to its home. He doesn't count the heartbeats between his own blinks but he still feels them, cracks against his chest and the soft vibration that ripples through his own body. He stares at her until his eyes become as dry as the torn pages of a tale, lost to time and found by the present.

He worries that, if he blinks too many times, if he looks away for too long she will disappear again.

He knows that at some point, she will. Knows it's selfish to think she'll stay alive forever, that her second chance hasn't already been burned and her ticket to the next world punched.

But for once, he's okay with that.

He only notices she is different when they begin their next day. He can feel the way she stares now, the way she stares into the distance until it finally starts to stare back. He wants to ask her how it had felt, what the final heartbeat sounded like, if it was cold like ice or hot like fire. But every time he tries to open his mouth the words catch within his throat, his eyes can't connect with hers and a heartbeat goes numb in his chest.

He doesn't know what death felt like. Maybe he'll find out, soon.

When he'd first risen into the arena, any hopes of writing his own story had been dashed. Between blood sprays and blood-curdling screams he'd burned the pages of a story he called his own, ended the chapters before the Capitol could do it for them.

Yet, they throw second chances out like candy.

Perhaps he could write a story of his own.

He hears the shouts before he spots them, eyes drifting upward and catching the figures as they dart and fly at one another. The mutt lashes out and, in turn, the boy responds, burying his weapon deep into the mutt. 

Howls and screams and swinging swords. It's not new to him anymore, but he still feels that selfish feeling of wanting to come out of it alive, of wishing for the tributes and mutts alike to end up the opposite.

He's finally okay with that.

He recognizes Steel. Truly, he does. Just, he wishes the alcohol they'd shared had done a better job of letting him forget.

"Bird, let's hit them while they're distracted-"

Fate twists and turns and a knife flies by his head to graze Bird's cheek, little red line following in its wake. He gasps, then swallows heavy, that same feeling of helplessness he'd felt watching Bird fall rising in his gut.

"Never mind, I guess. Go for the boy, she has armor."

She does, and he watches her graze his leg. Steel Campano floats before him, and if his selfishness rang true her, the boy, or both of them would have to fall. Yet, something in him keeps him stuck at the gate, because he can't bring his knife into her flesh, because his hands still shake no matter how tight he clenches the weapon, because he doesn't have the heart to do it.

Because he's selfish, not brave.

That is okay. For now, at least.

[Callum tries to attack Kenji, misses, and attacks the Diplomocera or whatever with a throwing knife]


n21Zk0izwCthrowing knife


[Knife Deep in Chest -- 9.0]

throwing knife

[WT]

The human blocks your swing with some kind of big colorful rock that in some other circumstance you'd like to poke at and in this circumstance are thoroughly annoyed to see; it doesn't hurt through your shell, but the impact reverberates uncomfortably. You wave your tentacles at him and flap around in indignation. If you're honest, you're pouting, and in a minute you know you'll settle down and accept that being stopped from breaking a rule isn't the end of the world; but you need that minute to sort yourself out, and you're still in the middle of trying to do that when the human brings the rock back up.

It dawns on you, with the sound of your shell cracking open for the first time in your life, that you may, possibly, perhaps, have made a grave mistake.

You almost hit the ground before you recover yourself, wings wheeling hard, alarmingly aware of your blood dripping into the mud below. On instinct you turn to the other humans; you know you'll be in trouble for hitting someone, but no one has ever made you bleed. Surely they'll help? At least, you think they'll help, but apparently nothing in your life makes sense anymore, because humans can fly—or at least these ones can; if they all could, wouldn't the humans at the testing center have just come to get you instead of flailing around at the ground that time you flew up to play with the ceiling vents?—and the rest of this group aren't paying any attention to you at all. More of them are calling out but none of them are talking to you, and two of them are busy throwing things at each other—no, three of them are busy throwing things at—ow!

You panic up instead of down this time as a blade burrows into the newly-opened crack in your shell. The curly-haired human who flew up hasn't helped you, but she hasn't hurt you, either. Pain-wracked and panic-addled, all you can think to do is race up to get her attention so she can make it all stop.



Waffle [Flying Diplomoceras] attacks D8F Steel Campano, blunt
OBFCmOJ8f8blunt
[Gash/Bruised Right Collar Bone - 3.0]

blunt

[lance]

Your blow connects with the muttation with a satisfying CRACK, and as the beast itself almost shockingly limps away - can someone eve limp while they're flying? - you can't help but feel almost....

Disappointed.

Yes, disappointed. You'd finally felt good enough to take a solid fight against something, the recovery of your death nearly complete, and all the Capitol had sent your way had been this one little mutt? You knew you should have been grateful to not suffer something worse, but at the same time the warrior's blood boiling in your veins was not quite ready to simmer down just yet.

And then Steel takes to the skies and tries to throw a knife - an impressive feat that you knew you wouldn't have a chance in hell of replicating - but even in the mutt's weakened state the blade does not hit home. Down, down, down it spins, sailing towards the ground-

-and then it slices an unfamiliar girl, accompanied by a similarly unfamiliar boy, that you hadn't even seen coming.

For a second, shock floods your system, the idea that not one but two foes could get this close unthinkable - but only for a second, as you realize that with your fixation on the mutt, the giant fucking chicken from last games could have probably snuck up on you and scared the shit out of you.

Steel had, perhaps completely inadvertently, saved you from being skewered from behind. And as the shock ebbed away, you found another grin crossing your face - this could be the fight you were waiting for.

And the duo, for all intents and purposes, don't give you much more time than that to figure things out. The girl rushes forward, slices into your leg before you can fully dodge, while the boy throws a knife that oh shit you cannot possibly-

The mutt, of all things, saves you. Whether due to intent or pure dumb luck, the offending projectile sinks into the beast's body just as it flew between you and the other. With a horrified screech, the mutt flies over to where Steel hovers. For a moment, you consider helping. But you had never really gotten the hang of flight the way she had, and besides, you knew she could take care of herself.

That left the two fuckers on the ground. Just like three days ago - she'd take one target, and you'd do your best to deal with the other two. A grin begins to cross your face as you heft your weapon, but then you see the blade in the girl's hands - and you freeze, for you recognize that knife only too well.

How couldn't you? That very same type of blade had drawn blood beneath the earth. Butchered Kestrel from Nine. And it had saved your life even as you had driven it into Emmett's eye.

"You've been down there too, huh." It's not a question so much as it is a statement - right here, right now, you and the girl are two of the only tributes to have seen what lies beneath and live to fight another day. "Did they make you kill someone to get back up here, too?"

You wait only for a second for her to respond, for at the end of the day, kindred spirits you may be, she is no friend of yours. She is a foe, and foes are meant to be fought.

So you swing your rock thing with the same intensity you had just cracked the mutt's shell with, at the one person in this entire arena who has gone through what you have, lived to tell the tale, and had the misfortune of crossing your path.

Misfortune, of course, because undead or not, she must die for you to claim your victory.

Just like everyone else.

kenji attacks bird; geode morningstar

TT4NMcysfispiked blunt

14040 -- MISS -- 0.0 damage

accuracy, day five

spiked blunt

14034 -- BROKEN RIGHT HAND -- 6.0 damage

spiked blunt·spiked blunt

[✨ zozo.]

Shooting back towards the ground, I catch a glimpse of her first in the moonlight. A cut across her cheek weeping blood and one of my knives on the floor sends me into a panic, gasping and losing my thoughts at the sight of my handiwork. Friend, foe, I don't get the chance to decide for myself. Instead the monster catches me in my confusion and smacks at my shoulder, a yelp the last thing that leaves my throat before I hit the ground. With a thud I tumble and roll with the petals, the wind in my chest knocked straight out of me and carried away with the gusts of thorns.

I try and gasp for air but nothing works, a panicked scuffle forwards as the beast circles us three - four, the boy from the ledge on the twelfth floor. Callum, I want to call out, help us. But all I can manage is a wheeze. The wind taunts me, howling at my ears, then it plunges right back into my lungs and I gasp, clutching wildly at my boots to try and kick them into life.

"Callum!" I try again, begging for mercy. "Wait!"

But my pleas fall on a howling wind and deaf ears. He lunges toward Kenji and my throat closes up, his beautiful friend following suit. Kenji doesn't back away from a fight and I can't drag him out of this one today, not with the beast above us so desperate to keep us in the ring.

"Hey!" I try, kicking my boots to life and shifting myself between the three tributes. "You still got that book?" A panic, my eyes wide and my heart racing in the heart of battle. Anything to distract him, to make him hesitate, anything to keep Kenji from throwing himself into the abyss of death for a third time.

I've already lost him once. By some miracle they gave him back to me. Another chance, some might call it a gift. Others a curse. If I lose him again I have a sinking feeling that the arena won't be so forgiving a second time around.

"Did you get all your notes?"

But it's useless. Weak, feeble Steel with nothing but words. They worked on Kenji when I first met him, ("D-don't come any closer!") and they worked when I begged him to return ("Please come back,") and they worked yesterday ("Come with me, please!") - but to everyone else they fall short.

Actions speak louder than words, so I rise into the sky and launch my knife toward where they stand.

steel tries to distract callum and attacks bird, throwing knives 2/10
beqWtUtPNXthrowing knife
miss

accuracy
throwing knife
Shallow Cut on Neck -- 4.0 damage

throwing knife·throwing knife

[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

bird ivy

The void doesn't get filled by anything. Not the mutt, not the tributes, not the blood that I bleed, not the screams I keep silenced within. It consumes everything the world throws my way; they could fuck me over a thousand times and I'm not sure I'd even flinch. Because that's what happens when you die and come back to life - you pay a price, and though you don't feel like you have, that's when you know that you have.

"You've been down there too, huh." The boy says. I don't want to entertain his words because if he's the other one that made it out alive, surely he knows what it is like. To be dead and come back half-alive. To look at the sun but only see the sky. "Did they make you kill someone to get back up here, too?" He asks. I don't fall for it. It's an attempt to distract me. It's an attempt for him to try and justify knocking me down again just because I killed Hellemine.

Don't get me wrong, I may not be able to feel anymore, being empty and all. But in some ways, I am still the girl I always was. 

"Nah. I didn't kill anyone." Yeah, it's a lie, but what is he going to do about that? Beat my ass? I died, so this ass is already beat.

I would have liked to have thought that the one person who understands the permanent sinking feeling in your stomach that comes with seeing your shadow morph into your reflection would be sympathetic. Maybe they'd at least offer some comfort. Some care. Anything, because even nothing in this arena goes a long way. But it seems everyone here has fallen under the spell of the Capitol: played like a toy, lulled into a false sense of security, dreaming about how there's some sort of happy ending.

They don't exist. I am living proof. If he wasn't a fool, he'd accept that he is too.

But it is the fools who chase the gold at the end of the day, and looking at him, I see that glint in his eye that comes when someone fixates on a reality that doesn't exist. Mom should've read some stories to the other people in this arena, it would've made them sadder and made them softer, sure, but above anything else it'd make them realise that they are not as special as they think they are.

Just normal. Because even when extraordinary things happen, you stay normal. And that's what makes it so heartbreaking.

[ bird ivy attacks kenji nakamura ; knife ]

jKjTbvGOJuknife

[ 2061 -- Deep Gash on Left Calf -- 8.0 damage ]

knife

[pogue]

C A L L U M    L E A R E

His knife flies towards the boy and, for a moment, he believes that it will strike true. Grits his teeth, curls a fist and opens his ears not to the sound of the ghosts that scream his name but for the coming sound of a cannon. Instead, he watches the mutt dive in front of the boy, his knife burying itself into a freshly made wound.

An ear-splitting screech. A gasp. An inner sigh. No cannon.

He curses whatever it is that brings such bad lack into this arena, that forces it to follow him silently within the shadows and etch itself into his skin. It's a crushing feeling, perched on shoulders and, with every broken crushed shattered heartbeat it doubles its weight. He blinks and, in the split second of darkness sees Kestrel's face in the sky, feels her eyes pierce through his skin his bones and into his heart, twisting and tumbling before clawing their way back out. You let her die- a voice in the back of his mind chimes in.

you let her die too. His heart follows as he glances over at Bird, seeing her skin erupt in wilting roses of red as they attack her, hearing her gasp in pain as the boy brings his blunt down on her hand. Two days ago the sound of bones splintering and collapsing in on themselves under the weight of a world they'd been forced into would have made him sick, would have reached down into the pit of his stomach and twist, curl fingers around bile and pull it back out of his throat. Bird would have made fun of him, back then.

Now, he just sees red. Feels it, too. Feels it write itself into his veins and poke through pale skin wrapped around thin bones and suddenly, knuckles run white against the blade of a knife as he raises his arm.

"Callum, wait!"

Blink. See red, then purple, then blue. A heart too selfish to support his broken promises beats once, twice, and his grasp loosens every so slightly as Steel blocks his path. "Hey, you still got that book?" She asks, and in her voice desperation is written, pierced into the words like pen on paper. Spilled ink, her tone bleeds and pleads for him to stop what he's about to do. "Did you get all your notes?" 

She's stalling, he knows this. But it's like he's looking through a dirtied window and expecting to see whats on the other side perfectly clear. The mind plays tricks on itself in a place like this, convinces him that he shouldn't throw the knife straight into her forehead.

Worst of all, he listens to it.

"Worse for wear, but it's still there." his voice shakes and rattles from his lungs, desperate to see the world but scared to fully step into it. He shakes and pulls a breath down into his throat and feels it plant ice into his lungs, hardening until he can't feel it beat anymore.

"Too...too many of the pages are red now."

Against his will and against the weight of his heart in his chest, his voice shares the same desperate panic that Steel's does. For a second, a moment, he thinks Steel might relent.

Instead, her knife writes red into Bird's neck, sat close to the same noose of a scar that wraps around her throat.

Gasp heavy. See blue, then purple then red.
One heavy heartbeat in the chest. Feel blue, then purple, then red.

"You wrote that you were here, and then you weren't, Steel."  He calls to her as she takes to the sky, lacing every bit of poison and malice within red words.

"Please, Steel. I don't want to be the one to have to make that come true."

Sees red, feels red, but the last part is just a plea drowned in anger. Knife flies from his grasp as Bird buries her knife into the boys leg.

[Callum attacks Kenji Nakamura, throwing knives]


b5c7m|VzBIthrowing knife


[Knife in hand, 6.0]

throwing knife

[WT]

None of the humans are paying attention to you at all anymore. Even the girl you knocked—too hard, too hard, she fell and you can't tell at first if she's okay, should have known they aren't fliers as practiced as you—doesn't come back for you. If you stopped to breathe and think, you would realize you could run now, while they're busy throwing things at each other and ignoring you. But you aren't thinking at all anymore; the alarm bells in your head have risen to a blare, leaving no room for plans.

Humans don't act like this. Humans are company nearly as good as other Diplomocerata; they don't always make too much sense and sometimes you don't see why you should do what they say, but they bring food and puzzles and you like when you can make them laugh. And maybe they can get a little snippy at the end of a long day, but they always come back calmer the next day. Even the ones you don't like as much—the scientist with the green badge who never laughs when you solve a maze by popping the lid off the tank, the early-morning cleaner who never lets you play with the scrubbers—rarely do more than huff at your antics and are always gentle when they push you out of their space. It never gets like this. They never get like this.

There's blood in the air from you and from the humans and everything hurts and everything is wrong wrong wrong wrong.

Two of the humans stop to talk for longer than the other two; you almost feel heartened, until the girl you hit throws something shiny and sharp at the other girl. You throw yourself after, not really sure what you intend to do—get in the way, knock her out of the thing's path, beg her for help—but sure you need to do it quickly.



Waffle [Flying Diplomoceras] attacks D12F Bird Ivy, blunt
uqPeYTHzt_blunt
[Bruised Left Wrist - 2.0]

blunt

[lance]

A lie passes through the lips of the girl, perhaps intentionally so, for while you were perplexedly trying to figure it out, she lashes out for the attack. Another strike low, this time tearing more into flesh and drawing more blood from underneath your skin. Three days ago, you might have screamed - but you've bled and died and healed and bled again and you find it's somewhat easier than normal to stifle the cry of pain behind clenched teeth and a hiss.

Talk was cheap. And relating to this girl who wanted you dead for some reason or another and in her half-dead state was a lost cause, so what even was the point?

You realize it doesn't matter. You wanted your fight, and you got it. Either you die here, to return to the catacombs in an endless state of purgatory or for good, or you kill this girl and damn her to the same fate. Such is the way of life, such is the way of death-

Something silver glints out of the corner of your eye, and once again it is reflex that saves your ass - or in this case, eye - from getting stabbed.

As it is, your hand proved to be a paltry defense against the projectile tossed from the boy, and this time you cannot repress the scream that erupts from within your lungs. But it isn't a scream of fear, of despair - it's a scream of rage, of anger fueled by pain, for the world should know that you've already found yourself on Death's doorstep once this life and it's going to take a hell of a lot more than pain to drag you back down there against your will.

Chest heaving, teeth bared, another scream practically tears its way out of your lungs as you pull the blade out of the flesh and blood of your hand. The very same one you'd lost the thumb to Emmett, and you've never been more glad that you're left-handed before this day because at this point even Steel's healing touch would be hard-pressed to bring you back to full strength.

But you're not dead yet. You may be a corpse, but this corpse has air flowing through his lungs and boiling blood coursing through his veins. You're right in your element, facing a fierce battle against a mighty foe - or foes, as it were - and if this is what living is, then fuck Death - they can come and claim your ass another day.

Right now, there's another soul that finds herself closer to endless damnantion than yourself. And you're already practiced at being the reaper's servant - what's one more to add to the pile of sins you've already built up?

kenji attacks bird; geode morningstar

8VBUe5ekBxspiked blunt

14065 -- BROKEN JAW -- 7.0 damage

spiked blunt

[✨ zozo.]

He's scared too.

I can hear it wavering on his voice, shaking like mine. Fear, it takes control of our words before our bodies ceasefire for half a moment. He tells me about red pages - maybe he's trying to scare me - and I think of Emmett in the sky, of a girl or two, and I wonder if he killed them down there.

I wonder if they even made it to where Kenji went, or if they simply slipped away without a second chance.

"I-"

"Please, Steel," someone else's turn to beg. We are so alike in so many ways and when he pleads for me to show mercy my heart hurts - we want the same thing. To survive. But we can't all make it out of this place alive. Not with that thing in the sky and the Gamemakers hell bet on seeing us fall only to rise again as miracles for one last fight.

I wish I could grant him what he wants. But I have no choice. It's us or them, them or us. Call me selfish, call me weak, but I can't fight to save all of us today.

Kenji swings in my peripheral vision as the mutt charges at Callum's friend and my words falter, sucking in a sharp breath and praying my friend isn't hurt. He thirsts for a battle like I thirst for shelter - we are fight or flight.

"I don't want that either."

Flight, I tilt my toes forward and float into the sky.

"So go," I beg, gesturing towards our friends and the mutt tangled up in a floury of wind and petals, thorns and steel. "Go Callum. I'm not going to beg you."

With that I turn around and gain height, swerving around with my elbows bent for balance - but as I spin the gales catch at my makeshift wings and I tilt to the left. Too fast. Too suddenly. In the heart of the storm I spin like a leaf, powerless against my runaway boots. Shrieking and spinning around in mid air, the knives I'd collected at the top of my satchel spill out into the sky and hurl towards the ground like rain.

"LOOK OUT!" a blood-curling scream stretches across the storm, watching with wide eyes as the blades scatter around the cluster of tributes and muttation limbs. One hits the ground with a thud, another stabs a lone pink petal into the earth, and my heart falls to the floor with each blade.

Too late to try and catch them with my bare hands, I regain my place in the sky and dart toward the earth with a prayer on my lips.

steel accidentally drops her knives in mid-air and one hopefully hits the flying diplomoceras
[ attacks the diplomoceras with throwing knives, 3/10 ]
4UBgyqSSDAthrowing knife
Shallow Cut on Bicep -- 3.5 damage

throwing knife

[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

bird ivy

I've imagined my death a lot.

I mean, I've lived it, too, but before that. I thought about what it would be like. I considered whether or not I'd find it as peaceful as I'd hoped it would be. Whether or not I'd be surrounded by people I cared about and people that cared about me. Whether or not there'd really be a light at the end of the tunnel that my soul would just kind of drift into. Whether all the white noise suddenly turns to black and your soul is there, trapped or whatever, waiting for it to fade into something else.

But it never fades from black. It only fades to black. I know that now. I've lived and died that experience. I've been to the far walls of life and carved my name into either side of the spectrum; the light and dark unable to find itself a place in my body because the emptiness is just so goddamn consuming that it eats everything that threatens its power.

Yeah. Death is shitty. Death is really shitty, and when I volunteered for the games, I was hoping for a story I could get lost in. I wanted a story that meant something, you know? A story that people would tell again and again and that the audience would get lost in too. But there's a bitterness in the air that snatches that satisfaction from me, as if to every word there is a bite, there is a buck and there is a punch that wants to knock me out cold. I volunteered for something that didn't exist, and yeah, it's depressing, it's real depressing, but all those stories at least prepared me for a moment like this.

When you've already been to the end of the world, there's nowhere else to go. There's nothing else to see. Nothing else to explore. No more adventures to have. And yeah, maybe I'd have liked to have seen what else life could possibly throw my way: a love or two, heartbreak, family, future - whatever. But I had my time and to put in bluntly, that time was up yesterday. I think I've realised that escaping the catacombs wasn't a second chance.

Not really. It wasn't a second chance for me, anyway. It was just a narrative. And whilst I love stories, I love stories so much, I don't want to be part of anyone else's. I want to be in my own, firmly and completely, wholly, so that it can become my home.

But the pages of my book are weathered. They've been weakened by the author's tears, Mom, finally realising that her daughter is just a normal person and is just as vincible, just as mortal as all the characters who came before her. Not even close to being a hero because quite frankly, she was stupid, blind. Wrong. Normal. Making mistakes and paying the price. Wishing so desperately she could go back, but the clocks don't rewind just because some girl from Twelve wants them to. Life doesn't work like that.

I've lived a life already. I know it doesn't.

I stand before these two other tributes. They've broken me down. I thought this was going to be the sequel I had always wanted, the glory, the hope, the gold that shines through the window in the summer, the warmth of a hug, the intimacy of a first kiss. But this is even worse than being stuck in the Capitol's vision of purgatory; demons are real and they come in the form of your peers. And I have Callum, I've always had Callum, but not even Callum can fill a void in a person.

The boy and the girl look at me. I hope they're happy with what they've achieved. They're killing someone who is already dead. Good luck finding redemption from that. Because I know that when they find it, it'll be just as broken, just as mangled as the girl they killed trying to find it.

"I missed you when I died before, Callum, and I'll miss you even more next time." Even if I don't want to admit it. I look down at myself, whatever life is left in my blood dripping down my arms and legs, my eyes glazed over like I've been pulled into an ethereal realm. I think we both know how a fight like this goes. "Keep on keeping on, okay?"

"And think of me, please, even if it's only when you're sick."

Though I use almost all of the strength I have left saying a goodbye that means something, I still fight. Because that's how normal people die - they die fighting. They don't give up. They never give up. All the normal people in the stories I loved died being who they always were.

And when you're from Twelve, when you've lost your teeth, your homework, your sanity, your emotions, your Mom, your life - you realise that fighting is all you have ever done and is all you'll ever do. 

[ bird ivy attacks kenji nakamura ; knife ]

dtSy_d5t42knife

[ miss ]

[ accuracy ]

knife

[ 2065 -- Shallow Cut on Right Calf -- 3.5 damage ]

knife·knife

[pogue]

C A L L U M    L E A R E

She tells him to go and he wants to tell her to save it, anger flooding up from deep in his stomach as Steel answers, ice in her voice and in her movement. They'd once shared the bottle, dove head first into murky water in the hopes of not remembering the next morning, in the hopes of splitting headaches to focus on instead of their imminent deaths, in the hope of finding what they'd lost at the bottom of the bottle, in the hopes of taking back what they'd given the Capitol, and what they'd let it keep.

Now, they just share a cold stare.

"I'm not going to beg you." 

He steels his glare, tries to puff up a heavy chest and feels whatever is left of a broken heart scream in protest, ice nipping at his palm as his hand tightens around the throwing knife within his grip.

"I'm not going to beg you either Steel. I guess we both should be past that at this point."

He doesn't know if the words even reach her ears, or if they're snatched up by the howling winds that she flies into, screaming rituals at the top of its lungs as it swallows and encases them. He sees red and he sees red, and pinks and whites as he watches her stumble and lose the weightless fools footing she'd granted to herself. The knives scatter like petals and he catches the sunlight bouncing and glinting off of them in the air, blinks and sees the snowflakes falling in the district square of Twelve with sunlight coating their bodies.

It's almost beautiful. Or, it would be if they weren't falling straight towards him.

"Oh, fuck!" The words fall from his lips as he raises the back of his feet and twists his body, the jet boots blasting him suddenly backwards and into the dirt. Pain erupts from the gash in his stomach as he hits the dirt, knife slicing slightly into the palm of his hand as he hits the ground. The air is knocked from his lungs by the impact, fuck, and he stumbles to right his body again, pressing palm to knee as he stands.

It's then that he hears it, sees the boy swing his hammer and the crack of bone yell out in its wake.

"Bird!" He yells and knows she hears it, knows they've all heard it even over the shouts of the petals around them. She stumbles backwards and he nearly presses his jet boots up from the ground to fly forward and catch her, but like all these other times she has a strength he will never know and catches herself. Blood pouring from her mouth her arms her legs and coating the white robe wrapped around her. He catches her stare and knows,-

and that's the worst thing of all, is that fate isn't kind enough to give him the ignorance to think she'll make it.

But he's lost her before, and he lost Kestrel. He knows how a fight like this goes.

"I missed you when I died before, Callum, and I'll miss you even more next time."

"Keep on keeping on, okay?"

He couldn't promise that to her, not here not yet. Tears of red in his eyes twist and tumble and fall heavy down his cheeks, leaving paths of blood in their wake. 

"And think of me, please, even if it's only when you're sick."

There's a grin that starts to pry its way in between his lips and he chokes it back, a half a breath leaving his nose as he nods to her.

"I will, Bird. I promise."

Maybe that's the one promise he can keep.

"Wherever you escape to Bird, I hope it's like the stories we both know. You deserve that."

Even with death pulling at her pages she still swings at the boy, charting a line of red in his cloak and he follows suit, raising his arm and aiming the knife. Even at death's doorstep they fight, the hunger and the pain and the loss and the suffering of Twelve branded into their skin and their stories. The knife flies from his grasp, the only lesson Twelve ever taught him dancing in his mind:

Fight. Fight until you take the world, or the world takes you.

[Callum attacks Kenji Nakamura, throwing knives]


aW9jUS_ndQthrowing knife


[SC on bicep - 3.5]

throwing knife