DTT: Round Two, Ace vs Penelope

Penelope Marcet

The eminent power controlling everybody here seemed to make it so again. For what? I didn't know yet. As before, I didn't know much. My wounds revived themselves, my hair repositioned itself, and a deep cold breath was taken before I looked again at my new foe. Shorter than the last. Not recognisable. "And whose Games were you apart of, again?" I ask them, starting to get a gist for what's going on around me. A gauntlet of the dead, perhaps. Unless maybe, this is the afterlife. A gauntlet of the once-dead-now-reborn.

Perhaps victory means the ultimate revival. "You're not taking this chance from me" I grow, the newly formed weapon in hand and striking with force unbecoming of my previous body. Now, I'm anew. Now, I'll end them all.

Penelope Marcet

“I won’t make this easy for you.”

They made their attacks, and by fate or misfortune I'd managed to escape anything of worth. "Tell your strikes that" I jest, grinning wildly underneath a guise; I can see they've at least tried to be a career, maybe. That's always enough, in the Games, to make your heart flutter a little.

My resolve isn't questioned by their attacks, and I follow it up with a flourish of my own. I grip the new sword tighter as an extension of my own being, the kind I was trained to wield, if not when I too trained for the Games, but by the mystical force that alluded us even now. I think on my current target, pounding a judgement as thick as obsidian: This round is mine.

And I repeat it violently. "This round is mine!"

Penelope Marcet

“That’s cute.”

I want to disagree with all my being, but then it is, isn't it? While yes, from an outward way of looking at this duel maybe we do look untrained and incapable. Essentially, maybe we have found a match in one another. If only this wasn't some spectral game. "I could've used you in my Games..."

Then, I realised how narcissistic I sound. Of course I'd have used Ace. I'd use anybody to get to victory, at least now, in the afterlife. This might be both of our last chances to achieve something of value being our eventual eternal rest. If that's what happens. Who knows.

Our tussle continues, and while I can see Ace wears their heart on their sleeve, their blade reaches my own sleeve and slices sharply. They'll pay for that, I hope, and I retaliate.

Penelope Marcet

There didn’t seem to be a sunset. There definitely wasn’t a sunrise. Maybe that was it, the end of all things, and here in the great unknown sat a set of Districters cursed to forevermore fight as children. Maybe, just maybe, this was how the Games have always worked. Some kind of Capitolite sprung-trap now banishing us to an endless battle for feigned glory. Is this even my first time here? Have I been floating around this realm since I lost… everything?

In thinking all of that, I then see it. It’s the similarities between me and Ace. I think my tally is at five in reality; one in the nether. Kills, that is.

“I’m about to make you number seven, sweetie” and I strike again.