[.}Earth is a Warm Dead Place{.][K/T/L][Day 2]

Katie was massaging her left calf - it had still ached a bit from being whacked with a crowbar and now throbbed after impact with the bottom of that whatever-it-was - when she thought she heard a noise. The rocky, dirty terrain here made the girl happy (the geometric greyness reminded her of home) but she severely missed the lack of white noise. Thus, her brain couldn't be trusted not to fabricate sounds from the landscape; it was really probably just part of her sweatshirt rubbing against a rock face. But nonetheless she allowed herself a minute of much-desired rest, leaning over awkwardly to rub her calf in a massage technique she'd picked up at the Training Center in a way that would (ideally) relieve some of the bruising. Her whole body remained tense, as if expecting some sort of predator to come. You are so ridiculous- you've just managed to step in a giant hole, of course that's why you're shaky, just walk. That cloud above the mountain looks like a big storm coming.
Sighing, Katie looked down at her persistently yellow wire bracelet and tugged at it a bit. Readjusted her grip on the metal-thing (which she had yet to figure out, so she assumed it was just a little metal object useful only to hit people with at close range). One last downward glance at the hollow pit she'd created in the ground - am I really that clumsy? - and then Katie continued on her way, ignoring the tightness in her stomach that nagged at her brain, insisting that no amount of paranoia was enough in the Hunger Games.

Rewind.

"Wo-oah-"
A steep rise in pitch accompanied Katie's exclamation, which was caused by a sudden loss of altitude as her left foot broke through a thin layer of earth and dropped straight down about two feet. The sharp fall made the girl almost certain that her stomach would fly up through her throat (fortunately, this did not happen) and it caused the quiet, panicked exclamation to escape her mouth. Actually, the uncoordinated teenager probably would have fallen had not her instinctive arm-flail actually produced benefit: she somehow managed to wrap her slender fingers around a branch her hand happened to come in contact with; and thus Katie was saved a more embarrassing (and potentially damaging) fall. As it was, the girl avoided this physical blip. Yet her calm rhythm was broken, her confidence smashed. Tugging at the branch and twisting her elbow to gain leverage, she managed to maneuver herself out of the hole and back onto solid ground, where she stood still for a few seconds, panting.

Rewind.

Lost in direction and thought, Katie trudged through the dusty landscape, mentally lamenting her departure from the giant rock column of the day before. Its ability to anchor her direction had been useful to the navigation-challenged teen, and it had been nice for a bit of shade. Here, walking towards a giant mountain in harsh late-morning sunlight, she really had no particular point to aim at, so she settled for 'straight ahead'. Stepping was a slow, profound motion, as if each one meant as much to the ground as it did to the girl. With no idea where she should be heading on a psychological level, Katie was the definition of lost. For a girl who had always reveled in the instructions of people wiser and older than she, the sheer huge freedom of the Arena was...intimidating. Stifling. Terrifying. Yet she pursued the goal of motion; left, right, left, right. Katie's brain was too tired of thinking; monotonous walking was an easier rhythm to settle into.

Rewind.

Bringing an anxious hand up to her face for the sixth time that hour, Katie rubbed at the pimples which had arisen there overnight; years of fighting for clear skin, all negated in that single day of stress and fear and dirt and sweat. (Mostly sweat.) The touch made her skin twinge and ache with now-painful sunburn that would get worse once the sun rose from its lazy spot on the horizon. Katie had been walking for hours now and the toll had long been taken - her legs barely ached at this point; that was over with a little while ago. After that awful blaring of music and the faces in the sky (what did they mean, anyhow? Those were tributes, right?...so why were they featured? Maybe for most kills. Pathetic.) she'd been unable to sleep, rejuvenated from her day of napping-while-moving and a few hours of sleep beneath the monolith after her brief exchange with the boy from District Three. For a while, the teen had just laid under the night sky, shivering at the thought of her parents lying awake too; shivering at the idea that Gage was probably still sick; shivering at home in general, really. Everything had been so normal, so regular even in its irregularities - like her inadvertently causing a boy to jump off a cliff - that the Arena's strangeness paled by comparison simply by being too overwhelming to contemplate. But hadn't she wanted this, wanted a change? ... Anything, she'd have given anything, just for the opportunity to shake up her parents the way they'd shaken her up - revenge, revenge! enough to give them a chance at reconciliation.
Fingering the wire bracelet idly, Katie continued her blank-minded stroll though the morning twilight. Ignoring the multitude of things begging to be thought about was easy - though she didn't know it, her suppression of the Arena's horrors and their implications had temporarily allowed Katie the privilege of storing away all sentimental musings. When they would return was highly relevant and completely irrelevant at the same time. The important thing was how dramatically they would return. But Katie did not know that.
She only knew that she was satisfying an unconscious urge to go somewhere, and that that giant shadow-mountain looked as good a destination as any.

Tantor and Kerchak.

The first attack from the evil creatures sent both pitfall lizards sprawling backwards slightly. First the larger male went down, a horrible cracking sound signifying the snapping of a bone. Even worse than the sound of the bone breaking, however, was the cry of the animal as it collapsed for a moment, agonized with the sudden pain. The beast ceased all movement for several seconds before another disgusting crack sounded in the air, this time coming from the femur of the smaller lizard.

Everything was still for a moment, with pained gasps of noise coming from each of the lizards. As little as they cared about their own safety, pain was inevitable. They could fight - they were going to instinctively fight - but not without great suffering. They had to fight.

The large, beady eyes of the smaller of the two lizards glanced towards his superior for the signal to advance again, and the animal was already up on his feet and moving - though much slower because of the pain. Immediately the second male followed, anticipating the move that his leader was about to make, both feeling the same agony that drove them angrily forward.

It did not matter that they were going to die. It did not matter that they could barely move.

It did not matter, and so they sent themselves forward once more.

Tantor (attacks Themba)
[dice=200+2000]
Shallow Cut on Left Thigh - 3.5

Kerchak (attacks Themba)
[dice=200+2000]
Miss - 0.0

Too rushed and scared to look for any non-superficial warnings behind his words, like perhaps something about venom, Katie only managed to catch the word 'teeth' as she stumbled backwards desperately and whacked into a boulder. "Okaytha--teeth? Oh g-" Overwhelmed by the sheer amount of new facts being thrown at her, Katie sidestepped with her back still to the boulder, trying to get far from the giant lizard-things. First she'd seen the man-boy and heard the far-off yells, indicating that the Arena wasn't as lonely as she'd hoped and feared, and now there were strange creatures attacking and they had teeth and oh god oh god what do I do nowhere to run they'll come for me but she was safe for the moment, wasn't she?

Katie took a long - albeit painful; she could see purplish shiny twisty-tubes that must have been his guts, in between powerful gushes of blood - look at the tall tribute's wound and finally the dots connected. Teeth. Teeth that could rip and tear. Katie did not particularly fancy the idea of being ripped or torn apart yet she was sure these lizards were capable of doing so. One of them, the one she'd hit and broken something in, kept missing even though it was lunging at the man-boy; the larger, second lizard, by comparison, was able to draw blood on his thigh. The girl cringed heavily, fighting her immediate instinct to go and help or at least ask if he was okay. There was no way for her to do that without getting in the way of the larger lizard; so as much as she felt that she should have been helping fight the larger one off, Katie swept out again at the one she'd hit before, hoping to keep it away from her - she was almost cornered, oh so desperately cornered - and maybe the bigger one would keep attacking her fellow tribute. Catching a glimpse of the big one's sharp teeth as it lashed out only enforced this belief. Bringing her switchblade case through the air haphazardly in an awkward motion as she pushed off from the boulder, Katie lunged forward on one leg, all the while fighting against the current of her terror.

Tantor and Kerchak.

For the first time, Tantor realized that there was another threat to fight against. He paused for the slightest moment in his aggressive attacks and stared at the new creature, widening his jaws and threatening her with his teeth just as she landed an attack to his front. A small gash opened up and dripped the slightest amount of blood onto the surface beneath them, but the pain was still slight compared to that of the worsening broken bones - now with the additional pain of two broken ribs.

Whether he was simply annoyed by the last attack or he deemed it ineffective to fight against the larger creature, the next attack was directed towards the smaller of the two. Tantor's movements were slow and steady from the sudden doubling pain, but he advanced towards the female tribute with his follower close behind. They were slowly beginning to lose their momentum, but they were not going to stop fighting.

Tantor (Attacks Katie w/teeth)
[dice=200+2000]
Deep Gash on Neck - 10.0

Kerchak (attacks Katie w/teeth)
[dice=200+2000]
Shallow Cut on Right Forearm - 3.5

GAH this is a filler. I promised myself I wouldn't filler.
But I can't lose 30 minutes of sleep and/or chemistry studying tonight just to post and I don't want to delay this fight any longer.
Ripred'll probably punish me fittingly with a block or miss anyhow.
D: