marsfairhart

[marsfairhart]

mars didn't see himself as being a jerk, honestly. he's just holding his ground, and he's not about to buddy up with this guy of all people. it's not like it's out of some sort of grudge because of his district partner or something, he just honestly doesn't see joules as someone who would make a valuable ally. "do something about what?" he scoffs.

"look, i don't give a shit if you killed hy or whatever. but i've claimed this area, okay? so if you don't wanna fight, then keep. it. moving." mars is confident that if it did come down to a fight, he would easily be the winner.

Joules furrowed his eyebrows when the other told him to keep it moving. Couldn't he tell that his legs were hurting and he wanted a break, from moving? What was it with these District One people being massive jerks? Huffing he waved his own actual knife around at the other tribute. "I don't want to, to keep it moving. So either do something about it or just deal with it." Being tough was the only way he could possibly win this thing.

If Mars tried anything well, Joules had a better weapon and had already killed one person from District One, he would do it again if he had to. "I really don't want to have to fight you though, so it would be nice if bygones could just be bygones."

[marsfairhart]

mars eyes the other man carefully. he soon recognizes him as the district five tribute, the one that sheen had told him would die almost immediately. yet he was the one who managed to kill his district partner.

don't get him wrong, it's not like they'd been best friends or anything. he just thought this guy wasn't supposed to be any kind of threat. and based on the way he is talking, mars doesn't think he is. but can he just kill him, right here and right now? he's not so sure.

"no," he states firmly. "so keep it moving, yeah?" he calls out, still pointing his makeshift knife at him.

Joules was crunching in the snow, marching towards a tree he saw, maybe there was food on it. He didn't know if there were any fruit trees that actually grew fruit in the snow and the cold. That was when he saw someone standing against it holding a knife now cause they had already seen him. Pulling out how own knife that he had gotten from the one District One tribute, he was now getting close enough that he saw that this was their partner and that he was covered in their blood. They'd have no clue though that it was Joules who had killed their partner, maybe they didn't like their partner? Joules had barely seen his. Once he was close enough, he waved with his free hand.

"I don't......don't wanna fight you. I just.....does that tree have anything to eat?"

[marsfairhart]

running in the snow surely ain't easy, but when his life depends on it, mars somehow manages to do it with ease. with a speed he didn't know he possessed before. he goes and goes, never once looking back. if he did, then he could potentially trip and fall and then he'd be that asshole's prey for sure.

so he keeps going. and even though those taunting words send a shiver down his spine, he keeps running. for a moment, mars almost feels stupid. should he have stood his ground and fought? no, surely running was the right answer in this scenario. all he has is a handmade knife, that guy had a whole fucking axe.

eventually he leans against a nearby tree, once he's sure he's far, far away from mahlon. panting heavily, he attempts to catch his breath.

"Dead, yeah," Mahlon conceded, smug in the violence, always tongue-in-cheek, even now. Dead, like Wynn. Dead, like Mars would be soon. But before Mahlon could carry through with the blow, Mars shot out from behind the tree, kicking up snow. "Fuck," Mahlon groaned. He saved his energy for dealing blows. Running wasn't really his forte as much as...blunt force.

So Mahlon slung the axe over his shoulder, thudding with a slow, lumbering lurch forward through the snow. "Three down!" A taunting shout. Two Careers dead at Mahlon's hand. Another one by Joules'. "Three more to go."

[marsfairhart]

there's something almost.. personal about all this. something mars can't quite wrap his head around. had he done something to set this guy off? to make him so intent on taking his head or some shit? the more he thinks, the more he comes up with nothing.

"--dead, you mean," mars says through still gritted teeth. he had watched it happen, his district partner somehow fucking killed by that stupid nobody from district five. sheen had said he wouldn't be any threat, that he'd be one of the first to die! so what the hell happened?

"nah," mars shakes his head. and with that, he takes off running.

"Or what?" Mahlon asked, head lolling the side, neck cracking. "I'll freeze?" He had cared little for his district partner, not because she'd done anything, but because Mahlon had made a point out of distancing. No allies. No early enemies. It made it easier to carry out the act of violence if he approached it with undiluted apathy. Of course, Wynn was still from Twelve, and -- while Mahlon assumed Careers like Mars didn't give a shit about district loyalty -- to him, to Mahlon...that meant something.

"I'd give y'the option, y'know," Mahlon tutted disappointedly. "Your life or your district partner's, I mean." He spun the axe in his hand, the curve blade rotating. "But they're--" Face-down in the snow, head bashed in, heart long stopped beating. "Busy."

"So," he shrugged, as though apologetic, though there was no remorse to be seen. "Eye for an eye an' all that. You understand what I mean."

[marsfairhart]

mars freezes up for a moment, not expecting it to be another tribute. truthfully, he thought it would be an animal or something. something easy to kill, something he wouldn't feel at least somewhat guilty about killing.

his jaw clenches and he holds the knife he'd made out, holding it so tightly it nearly cuts into his palm. "keep moving," he says through gritted teeth. an axe is much more intimidating than the knife he'd made, but he likes to think he's trained enough to be a force of nature in a fight.

if it came down to it, that is.

he hopes it doesn't.

Height was to Mahlon's advantage. To be up the cliff's face was to gain sight over the arena, over the tributes slinking, darting about. It gave him the ability to scout for supplies (meager as they fucking were, thanks to those shithead Gamemakers who made the damn thing). And it was -- as far as arena's went -- relatively quiet.

So Mahlon went hunting.

The benefit (and detriment, for somebody) was that non-natural things stuck out against the snow and stone. Beige fabric of a tarp, the faint green of small plants, the red of blood from the wounded -- they could all be seen a mile away. And when Mahlon saw the odd shadow of a figure, accompanied by the bright pant-leg of a tribute uniform, he drew up his axe, drawing nearer, curving around the base of the tree.

"Boo."

[marsfairhart]

gods, it's cold. so cold that it seeps into his very bones, chills him to the core. but he's managed to make himself a makeshift shelter and even better, he's sharpened a stone into a knife. it isn't much, but it's surely enough to end a life if need be. not like back at the cornucopia, where he simply snapped the neck of that girl from 12.

he hadn't meant for it to be that way but she was coming at him, wasn't she? and what other choice did he have but to kill her? because if he didn't, it could just turn around and end up biting him in the ass.

he's leaned up against a tree when he hears the familiar sound of crunching snow. whipping the makeshift knife out of his pocket, he holds it ready. his eyes widen and he spins around, looking for the source of the sound.

[marsfairhart]

the blood quickly begins to drip from his nose. well no, not really drip. more like pouring from his nose, staining the front of his uniform and dripping down into the snow. what was once pure white, was now a deep crimson. he looks up at alder, unsure of what to say or do now that he had successfully stolen the rope from him.

he almost wants to launch forward and go for it again, but it's too late. the other tribute gives him a small apology before running off. mars looks around at the chaos unfolding and decides it's time for him, too, to run.

scrambling to his feet, mars hurries off into the woods. well fuck, what now?

Alder stared back in numb horror as he heard a wet cracking sound, the rope suddenly going slack. He'd seen a lot of things as a mentor since his Games, but he'd forgotten how raw, how unfiltered and awful the things that happened in the arena were. It was just his nose, but he could hear the bone splinter, smell the blood on the snow. There was no commentary or tactful cutaways to blunt it.

His stomach turned, but he forced himself to his feet, hurriedly gathering the rope in this window of opportunity. "I'm-- sorry," he managed to blurt out, then tumbled over his feet to get away, far, far away. He wasn't even completely sorry toward Mars, exactly, just... in general. Alder had resolved to do these Games the righteous way, but here he was, moments in, already hurting other tributes. Again.

[marsfairhart]

mars thinks back to the moment they met, how he had tried hard to make himself seem like a nice guy. and really, he likes to think that he definitely is. but now is not the time for nice guys, not anymore. if he wants to survive, he's going to have to come out on top.

if that means stepping on others like alder, then so be it.

he continues to struggle with the rope, pulling with all his might as he watches alder hook his leg around to gain even more leverage. the career is slowly losing this battle for something so simple as fucking rope. fuck.

that yank was unfortunately all it took. his grasp breaks and all that force he had been using backfires. his arm slams into his own face and a sickening crack can be heard. his nose... definitely broken.

There was a flash of blue eyes and blonde hair among the snow, as icy as their surroundings, and it sent a surge of panic through Alder. Career. Not just a Career, the one that had given him a bad feeling back in Training, one that he'd toed the line of tentative truce with.

So much for that.

For a split second, he considered giving up, turning tail and fucking bolting. It wasn't exactly glorious, sure, but it would be... something. Then the same thought hit him again-- rope just like back at work in Seven. He wasn't in entirely foreign territory, for once.

Though his arm strength may not be much, he didn't need it to be. They didn't climb with solely arm strength back home, in fact, they used all sorts of work-arounds to avoid it, keep from wearing their bodies out. He hooked his leg around the taut rope, then snagged it around his boot to gain more leverage, use all his body instead. With all the adrenaline he had, he yanked the rope upward, toward himself, hoping it would be enough to momentarily compromise Mars' grasp. That was all he needed, one moment.

[marsfairhart]

there's a gust of wind that smacks him in the face as soon as he is sent up into the arena. the ground is covered in snow. so this is what this is going to be like. it's not like he hasn't experienced snow before, back in 1, but this is a whole new level of cold. it seeps into his very bones.

when the canon sounds, he's quick on his feet. there's a moment where he nearly eats shit in the snow but the tribute manages to recover in the next stride he takes. if he's going to survive this, he'll need some sort of tools, which means venturing into the cornucopia, even if it's a total bloodbath every time.

blue eyes dart around the space, looking for anything he can snag. and that's what he notices it, when it stands out amongst the rest, in bright neon green. rope. it's not a weapon, but it's something useful still so he goes for it anyway.

but there's a lot more resistance than he's expecting when he does and that's when he realizes, he's not the only one who grabbed it. another. the man from seven, who he had ran into in the training room. shit.

he pulls and pulls, hoping to come out victorious. hoping he can take it and get out of here as fast as possible.

The first thing he noticed was the cold.

He had a feeling it would be the last thing he'd notice too.

It drove under his exposed skin as countdown ended and he ran, the spray kicked up by the other tributes cutting at his cheeks like tiny knives. He'd fixated on one of the nearer looking peaks, thinking it as good a destination as any. While he may not intend to survive, he did intend to make it far enough that he'd die meaningfully, not in a senseless mass slaughter. That meant a little bit of survival.

Already he tasted blood in the back of his throat as he ran through the snow, rock, and ice. As his boots pounded the uncertain ground, he spotted a length of something, neon green and flecked with yellow. His first, nerves-addled thought was that it was a snake-- then, he recognized it as the newly-minted form of some of the ropes he saw at work-sites back in Seven. Rope.

He had to climb a mountain, right?

He swerved slightly to snag it, scrambling downward as he lost his balance with the change of direction. Fingers closing on the rope, he rolled, snow crunching under his back, but as he tried to get back to his feet he was stopped short by something-- no, someone-- at the other end of the rope.

Tug of war. What a way to die.

@marsfairhart

[marsfairhart]

mars continues to slash and strike at the dummy, hoping to prove himself as a formidable foe. maybe not to her, but at least to the others around them. "i was... shit, probably 12, i think?" that's when he had first entered the academy at least. "i was pretty good right off the bat, so they really drilled me hard with it."

"Oh, good." She wasn't sure if she was good enough for this to be worth it, but she was definitely going to be sore. at least it meant she was probably doing this right, at least if her logic served. and it seemed to. "so how old were you when you first picked up a sword?" she asked, suddenly curious.

[marsfairhart]

mars internally breathes a sigh of relief. it's all coming together, or at least he hopes it is. if he could stick together with the other careers, they could probably more easily weed out the others, former victors or not. "sounds like a plan then.. i'll go talk to sheen now actually," he says, nodding his head towards the direction of his quarters.

Cain smiled, the idea of a career pack slotting together nicely. It felt necessary, given how many victors were returning to the Arena. The careers hadn't been doing well recently anyway, and it was even less of a guarantee now. Then again, Cain wasn't sure if the unusual circumstances would mess up his plans for alliances. "Cool, cool," he agreed. "I'll talk to Two's team and we'll rope Sheen in. And we can see where my tributes stand."

[marsfairhart]

mars had unfortunately thought long and hard about that angle. sheen had might it quite clear to him that the former victors would have much more of an advantage, in many ways. it didn't fill him with much confidence, that's for sure. "that's why you gotta give 'em all you got," he says. "well it's definitely a full body work out, so pretty sore."

"oh, yeah." she hadn't even thought of that angle. even if the old victors didn't do shit, the capitol would probably want to frame them as formidible, to make it seem like a scarier threat. or maybe not, she didn't know how any of this worked. "Well, when I score low, how about you blame that?" She decided, whaling anew on her dummy again at his prompting. "How sore do you usually get after this?" she wondered after a second.

[marsfairhart]

"a kiosk, then," mars says with a laugh as he looks the woman over. "a museum, huh? didn't know that existed either," he chuckles again. "guess this place is just full of surprises then." and it certainly was, though not all of them welcome. "i'm mars, by the way. district one."

"Technically it's a kiosk," Denver clarified. "The actual gift shop where all this stuff usually is, and more if you can believe it, that's at the Hunger Games Museum." She almost launched into her pitch about how it was great and he should visit sometime - that was her job, after all - but she stopped. He was a tribute. There most likely wouldn't be a sometime for him, even if he was from District One. They hadn't exactly been on a winning streak, lately.

[marsfairhart]

mars unfortunately has no idea how to approach these little interactions with others. hell, he should've given wiley a hard time earlier yet he didn't. and now here he was, being all friendly yet again. little does he know, the older woman does still see him as somewhat of a threat.

"see you then," he nods before walking off. he breathes a heavy sigh, wondering how these little interactions he's had with all the others will effect him in the long run.

He was playing things close to his chest. Probably a good strategy. Neptune's eyes narrowed slightly, trying to parse out his intentions and capabilities, but she came up empty. That meant he was a threat - at least somewhat.

"Tomorrow, then," she said with a smile. He was avoiding. That could mean he was threatened. But all Careers were well trained, especially the ones coming into the Arena this round. However, Neptune was more than willing to let the interaction end here. She had gathered what she needed, and the rest would play out as it would.

[marsfairhart]

mars nods his head along with what the mentor says. he hadn't seen much of the district five tribute, but he'll take sheen's word for it. he certainly knows more than he does. so that's at least one tribute he doesn't have to worry about, then.

"yeah... yeah, i kinda figured that," he says with another nod. after all, how could one ever fully be prepared to be sent into an arena full of brutal death and bloodshed? "ah, so that's why they decided to chop my hair then," he laughs, but at the time it certainly was not funny to him. "uh... i guess we can do that mock interview you were saying?"

"Because he's thin, delicate, and weak. Nobody thinks he has a chance. I've seen that the betting pool he is winning in is that he'll be the first death in the arena." Somehow Sheen had always felt that betting on the first one to die, was always more morbid than betting on who was going to win. Though he thought they weren't wrong, while he may not be the first the boy from Five would not survive the Bloodbath that much was clear.

"Most of my tributes did good in the Acadamy, and yet still most of them die. The Academy can only teach you and show you so much. The Arena is always a beast of its own that you are never fully prepared for." Sheen smiled when Mars laughed. "You think I'm naturally blonde? They wanted me to fit the agenda." Nodding his head. "Good, then you have your approach for the interview. Do you need my help for anything else?"

[marsfairhart]

mars' eyes immediately go to the number on his training uniform. two. another career district, then. and after the conversation he had with cain, possibly an ally. he hopes that will be possible, as mars definitely needs the help. he isn't helpless by any means, but he also isn't the most formidable of opponents. "yeah it sure is," he laughs slightly. "glad someone sees how hard i'm workin' out there at least," he adds, laughing again.

Maverick, too, was sweaty after the day. He'd tried to hold back and avoid showing off, but he ended up working harder than he'd planned to, getting a bit carried away, practicing his presentation and working with Abel and Alder a bit. His thoughts were all over the place, as if touched by a live wire, when the other tribute ran into him. He was almost knocked off-balance, but righted himself by grabbing onto Mars's hand. He was about to say something frustrated, annoyed -- watch where you're going or something like that -- when he recognized the District One tribute. Instead he turned his expression toward a smile. "Hey, it happens. I saw you making quick work out of the knives, that shit's tiring." Mars hadn't been as impressive as he'd expected a tribute from One to be, but he wouldn't underestimate anyone.

[marsfairhart]

mars can tell right away that this guy has his guard up. and why wouldn't he, after all his uniform said he was from seven. a much further out district than himself, someone likely worse off than himself if he's being honest about this whole thing. and careers like him are known for being brutal and ruthless more often than not.

"good," mars says with a forced smile, patting the other man on the shoulder. "didn't mean to almost send ya flying there. name's mars, by the way." and he didn't have to introduce where he was from or anything, since the other man already knew. but he really is trying to be nice.

Alder was tired, distracted, and altogether wrapped up in his thoughts as he left training. There was an immovable, nauseated feeling in the back of his throat as the training presentation and interviews loomed large on the other side of this part of the Games. What was he going to do, what was there to show, what could he say to show them exactly where they could stick their--?

His stomach swooped and he was falling backward with a jolt, his arms scrambling to find purchase with a wall to not fall over completely. Blinking, he realized the jolt was contact with the District One tribute, immediately raising his internal alarm. "Fine," he answered shortly, suspicious this was some sort of sick Career game, trying to earn his trust or pity or something.