Juvenile Delinquecy -- For Fun and Profit [open/oswald tove]

"Oz, no!"

His friends hurried after him, their faces pale in the electric glow of District Nine's streetlamps. He offered them only a devilish snicker, his markers and charcoal pencils pressed close to his chest. The full moon rose high over their head, its light blurred by the heavy smog. He licked his lips in anticipation.

"Oz, we could get in so much trouble for this!"

"If you take another step, I'm going home!"

He took another step. They kept following him.

In less than a few yards, they would be in the district square. Set-up for the 90th Hunger Games' reaping began last week. The "cattle pens" for the potential tributes already erected, all clean and white, untouched the by the lingering grime that had contaminated the rest of District Nine. Oswald imagined their cleanliness, whiter than ivory and as bright as the sky used to be -- completely perfect. And he could see all the dicks he could draw on that cleanliness. Take up his markers, and absolutely obliterate that perfection with the funniest, dumbest crap his barely pubescent mind could muster.

"Look, it's going to be fine," Oswald explained, tossing his head back. "No one's going to see. It's going to be at the edge of the square, where the cameras can't see."

"Oz, that's not how it works!" one spat.

"They'll shoot you!!" the other screamed, tugging at her chestnut hair.

Oz stopped. The other two juveniles wheezed sighs of relief. "You think so?" he murmured, musingly, his cocky smirk twisting into a concerned grimace.

"Well, yeah, duh!" the girl snapped.

Oz thought about it for a moment. "Nah, it'll be fine!" He jumped a little bit in the air, rather like a small child, knowing very well he looked like an idiot and taking great pride in his willful idiocy.

The other of his two friends, a larger boy well-known by his teachers for his anger issues, suddenly flung down his hands. For a moment, it looked by his expression that he had given up, that he was ready to abandon his friends out of resentment and live the rest of his life without them. Then his cheeks flared red. He took two long strides with his tall legs and wrapped his arms around Oz in a crushing bear hug, hoisting his smaller frame up in the air as his feet flailed around. Out of fear rather than anger, Oz writhed in his grip, yelping as his markers and pencils slipped out of his arms and clattered to the ground. The girl, though the smallest of them, took the cue from the boy and wrapped her arms around Oz too, clinging to him as much as her toothpick arms would allow. "Guys, guys, guys!" Oswald pleaded, incapable of anything else.

Then, suddenly, from the murky black -- the sound of footsteps.

The commotion ceased immediately. The thirteen-year-olds looked up, their staring eyes flicking all around, not quite sure where the approach would come from, only that it was coming fast. Then the initial fear passed. Without thought of each other, Oswald's friends dropped him and darted off, splitting up in different directions in their panic. Meanwhile, Oswald fell hard on his ass, the jolting shock stunning him, too long for him to process that he needed to run too.

He watched. He listened. His entire body shook.

"H-...hello?" he whimpered.