DTT: Round One, Circe vs Penelope

For so long there has been nothing. She'd almost forgotten what something felt like.

It comes in waves. First the tips of her fingers and the edges of her toes. Then, the rest fills in, each contour and shade deepening, strengthening, becoming more real. By the time she steps out of the miasma she is so whole she almost doesn't recognize the blush pink of her nails or the strong set of her formerly broken jaw.

Of course the standard issue uniform they've assigned to her is beneath her station, as is the voice that intones, "none of you had what it took to be a champion in life."

How wrong it was. But no matter that it could not see the crown knit into her golden hair. At her waist is a slender blade and she spent enough time in the arena to know its purpose.

"And you are?" She demands of her opponent even before BEGIN crackles around them.

The knife feels foreign in her restored palm and almost slips from her grasp as she slashes at the girl.

"I know you." the beauty says and it makes Circe hestitate for just a fraction of a second. "70th, right?"

"Right," she says automatically. But of course, that makes sense. Her reputation would have only grown over time. And how much time had it been? Too long and somehow also an instant.

The girl fumbles with her own knife. Circe says a little prayer to the gods.

"I'm Penelope. You're... Lion, what was it?"

Well, at least she hadn't butchered her name -- or any of her, for that matter. "Circe," she says, hitting each 'k' sound as though spiking it with her heels. Except she wasn't wearing heels; she was wearing fugly standard issue boots. "Should I know who you are?" Distracted by the interrogation she does not strike.

"You will..."

That sounded strangely like a threat from the nearly incorporeal --

Oof.

The knife drives into her calf, slashing open the bland uniform and golden flesh alike. Blood pours out and for the briefest, longest moment Circe has a vision of Nat Krigel fountaining blood.

From kneeling, felled by the wound, Circe takes her blade and strikes upward. "Back off," she warns, huffing. "I don't want to break a nail."

It'salmost funny the way she says it.

But then Circe realizes it's true: Penelope lost. A lot. Whatever she'd been through before stepping out of the miasma, it was still a part of her. Was that true for herself? Had she lost very much?

The vaguest flash of blue eyes, a smoking gun, a golden shroud, and something that came behind...

She blinks. And she knows she lost everything.

This time when she strikes she makes a sound so guttural it sounds inhuman. "More than a nail," she says, nearly foaming. "All of them. Everything! It's all GONE!" She broadcasts across the afterlife.

All gone, and it was as though she had made it so.

The blow from Penelope comes fast and sure. Circe isn't the least bit surprised; even in this strange world where limbs and jaws have memories she can feel the encroaching death. The reaper has stalked her foot prints every since the very first day of the 70th Games. But she's never dared to look back and she isn't about to start now.

A rattle shakes her ribcage as the spectral elements of her begin to fade away. With the last power of her broken jaw Circe looks up to Penelope Marcet and says calmly, "give 'em hell."