#136 arena

[denverneumann]

Denver hugged the walls of the city as she tried to keep away from the fighting. The guns, the friends....she wiped away more tears, still not sure where she was going. She was a known loyalist, worked for the damn museum glorifying the damn games. Sure she wasn't high up, but she was in the Tower. She was there, and wasn't that enough? Hadn't that been what Enna had seen when she looked at Denver?

Denver couldn't think about that. She just knew she couldn't go home, couldn't return to the Tower, had to keep moving. That was the only thing. Keep moving. And then she saw him. And the clump of Vox soldiers headed in his direction.

"Cain," she cried, her voice little more than a hoarse whisper. "Cain, over here." She gestured him over to the shadows. He couldn't be Vox. He wasn't with them. He didn't have a weapon or any kind of uniform. He had to be safe.

@cain-gunn

[tired-gage]

Wiley had nodded off while Gage kept watch, staring over at her every few minutes to make sure that her chest still rose and fell, that she hadn't died. Wiley just needed to hold out for a little longer. If they could hide until they were the last ones left...it was a strategy that rarely worked, Gage knew, but it was possible.

Then the bombs started.

The crashes grew closer, a strange not-quite-warmth, perhaps just a lack of chill, filling the air. Something was coming, and they couldn't hide any longer.

"Wiley," Gage whispered, shaking the girl slightly as to not jostle her too hard lest she rip her very amateur stitches, "Wiley, love, we have to go."

@wileydepot

[notverybrighton]

Damien awoke to what sounded like an avalanche. Well, not that he'd had much experience in what an avalanche sounded like, but he imagined if he had it would sound something like this. He scrambled out of the ice cave he was sleeping in, lest he be buried alive, only to see the entire sky ablaze. What was this?

A chunk of the sky - the force field, Damien presumed - fell not twenty feet from Damien, and then he was running. But he didn't get far before he spotted another red suit, and now he was faced with the choice between sky falling and a potential enemy. More shrapnel made the choice for him, and he ran to the suit.

@kedzie-kensington

[denverneumann]

Denver was running. She had left the Tower as quickly as she could, so afraid of it coming down on top of her, but now she had nowhere to go. Was her apartment even safe? The Peacekeepers didn't believe she was loyal to the Capitol. The rebels would never buy that she was one of them. Denver knew how revolutions worked. She needed to hide, especially now that everything was coming to a head.

She hadn't meant to end up at the Capitol Arena, near the Hunger Games Museum. At least, she thought she hadn't. But there it was, the large imposing structure and the ruins inside, and she knew it better than anyone. If there was anywhere she would be able to hide, it was in there. Loathe as she was to disturb historical artifacts, she broke the glass of a nearby display, grabbed a long, needle-pointed dagger, and entered the Arena.

@ennalydonsbee

[tired-gage]

Gage was so struck by the vast expanse of clean snow, something never seen on the dirty streets of her neighborhood in Six, that she nearly missed the countdown, and nearly missed Wiley leaping from the platform in the wrong direction - right into the bloodbath. Oh no. Gage had sworn she would protect Wiley, so she scrambled off the platform after her. But there were too many bodies clashing and Gage ducked around a falling tribute and lost sight of Wiley in the fray.

Gage craned her neck, searching, but Wiley was on the other side of the Cornucopia when Gage spotted her. She was of no use to the girl now. No, she refused to let that be true. If Gage couldn't protect Wiley, perhaps she could aid her, and find something helpful now that she was trapped here. Gage looked quickly down, nothing within arm's reach save a pair of socks - but that could be useful, certainly, in somewhere so cold as this. She bent down to grab them.

@cowpokecole

[notverybrighton]

blood upon the snow; a self-para

As he stumbled through the snow, away from the Cornucopia and away from the Bloodbath, Damien tried to refuse to think about what had just happened, but found he couldn't think of anything else.

Damien's vomit froze before it hit the ground. He considered himself lucky that he had managed to pull his balaclava down in time. She'd been just a child, a child, and he had killed her. For all his work over decades of smuggling, he'd never killed anyone. And his first kill was a child.

He fell to his knees.

For all Damien had been involved in smuggling, for the purposes of general crime or rebellion, he had never been in a fight, not a true one. He'd seen them, of course, in Hunger Games of years past, and the aftermath of them, when compatriots came stumbling into the room where Damien was standing over a map. He'd noted, then, while others tended to the injuries, that he'd need to move the routes he sent his trucks.

Then the wind whipped across his face, the only silence in between a metallic countdown, and true fear gripped his heart for the first time in his life. He wasn't being sent into a fight; he was being sent into a battlefield.

And then he'd been stabbed. Damien had been stabbed, and if he didn't retaliate, he was going to die. He was going to die in seconds or minutes. He needed to act and he needed to act now. He'd lost the firewood. He would not lose his life.

When a figure approached from behind, he pulled the dagger out of his flesh and threw his body around, painfully, screaming, and sank the dagger into --

No.

No, no, no.

It was not Kedzie that stood before him, shocked, a cry tangled in his throat. It was Eve Rest. District Three.

Twelve years old.

Her breaths came fast, the only sounds escaping her while her youthful eyes screamed in agony. Damien hadn't thought about it, had lashed out, had twisted the knife in her gut before he knew who it was he was fighting. Blood poured from the wound, and the warmth of it soaked through Damien's glove. It was the first warmth he'd felt since they zipped him into his snow suit.

Damien stared in horror as tears fell from her eyes, crystalizing on the rim of the balaclava. It would be a slow death, bleeding and in pain, this child struggling to breathe, if Damien didn't act.

He didn't want to. To anyone who could possibly hear him, he didn't want to.

He pulled out the dagger and slashed her throat.

Eve's blood splattered onto Damien's face as she slumped to the ground before him.

What had he done?

He had to keep moving, had to get out of there before someone came for revenge, for opportunity, for anything. It was his life or theirs. He had no choice. He had to run.

He stumbled, fell to his knees, pushed himself up, and kept moving.

[tired-gage]

Gage sprinted when she saw the tents. It was everything she had been looking for. She could get her bearings away from the wind, and then go find Wiley. She could take Wiley back here, and they might be protected enough to sleep.

It was more than she had hoped for when inside the first tent she opened was supplies. Not much - duct tape, an oxygen tank, and a compass, but it was perfect. The wilderness survival textbook she'd read wouldn't help her much in the snowy mountains, but she had refreshed her memory on how to use a compass. She stepped inside reached for it, not even realizing that she had cornered herself in the tent until a shadow crossed her and, weaponless, she turned around.

@neptune-akoya

[tired-gage]

This was a desolate place, and Gage's body burned from the effort of running. She couldn't find shelter, and wasn't even sure what direction she was going in. She'd failed Wiley, already separated from the student she was prepared to die for. She tripped over her own boots and fell, hard on her knees against the snow, but Gage refused to cry. She wouldn't be seen crying in this Arena. She wouldn't give the spectators at home the satisfaction.

So it surprised her, then, to hear crying.

Wiley?

It couldn't be, but Gage felt delirious with the cold and the hope that surged through her, and she picked herself up and ran as best she could over to the muffled noise.

@jouleshoover

[notverybrighton]

Damien was still bleeding. He needed to find shelter. But the Gamemakers had chosen a color for their wardrobes that made shelter seem impossible, particularly from the distance that he was able to stagger, bleeding, away from the Cornucopia.

Perhaps he deserved to die like this.

He'd managed to get himself behind a cliff face of some sort, but it wasn't covered so much as just out of the way, and the trail of blood Damien had left behind him did him no favors. He was unsurprised when he looked up and saw another tribute. He clutched the bloody dagger in one gloved hand, leaning against the freezing rock, and waited.

@abel--evans

[notverybrighton]

When the force field around him fell with the final tone of the countdown, the first thing Damien noticed was the wind. He was buffeted by it, nearly prevented from leaping off his platform. Then he was running. He went directly into the fray because he knew that if he was to stand a chance in so desolate an arena it would only be with the aid of the tools found within the Cornucopia. But if Damien were to play this smart, a weapon couldn't be his goal. He was an older man. His body wasn't as resilient as it was when he was in his twenties. Training had taught him that much, and this wind was confirming it. He would need something to stave off the cold.

He snatched up a lighter first - small and likely with only a very limited supply of butane, but necessary - and then looked around him, careful to avoid the other bodies, already fighting, already killing. He spotted a bundle of firewood. Damien didn't know much about starting fires, but he knew wood and flame together could keep him warm. He reached for the strap that tied the logs together, but he wasn't the only one who had gone for it.

@kedzie-kensington

[denverneumann]

It had been years since Denver had seen an Arena with snow in it. Most Arenas, if nature-based, tended to feature hot and humid areas. But this...it was a mountain, just like the ones people used to try and climb before the Dark Days. She had to call her father later, and get his reaction. Maybe he'd tell some of his old stories.

And then a gnawing settled in her gut, and Denver looked around, the fairytale excitement fading as the expressions of the others watching the screens didn't match her awe. They were worried instead, and of course they were. So many of those in the Arena this time were friends, were loved ones, were victors who had already sacrificed for the promise of peace. Children and the elderly were expected to fight adult athletes in their prime.

"What do you think?" she asked, quietly, not particularly caring who she was talking to when she was so unsure of every single one of her emotions.