Pepper Rebio // d2 [fin]

Pepper Rebio

[/font]

weep for yourself, my man,
you'll never be what is in your heart
weep, little lion man,
you're not as brave as you were at the start
rate yourself and rake yourself
take all the courage you have left
wasted on fixing all the problems that you made in your own head

A P P E A R A N C E[/font][/size]

The only thing my twin sister and I have in common is our hair and eyes. My hair is mostly a light woody brown, but there are shades of blonde and dark amber. It even curls some at the ends a bit. Not little ringlets, but loose, spontaneous curls. It’s usually unkempt because down here, in the dungeons, you don’t have time to make yourself look pretty.

I don’t care that my hair is all over the place, but it’s getting fairly long: reaching to just below my eyes. Luckily the curling keep some of it back, but not all of it is twisted, so it sweeps over my hazel eyes – which are the same color as my sister’s. They used to be so full of life and love, but now all my eyes do is scope out the weaknesses of my opponents. They find the faults in others; their cracks, their Achilles’ heel, their weak link.[/color] My eyes are skeptical, always sizing up the people around me.

My face is slightly elongated, but not so much that it’s abnormal. The hazel eyes are deep set and my eyebrows may be a bit longer than most, but not a unibrow. They’re just… long. My face – along with the majority of my body – bears the scars of the past fights. Some are long, some wide, some puffy, others small and blend into my ever-paling skin. The dungeons don’t see very many rays of sunshine, so my skin is fairly white. Not glowing, but still white enough to know I don’t go outside often. And if I do get outside, my skin only burns. Very easily, too.

When I used to live at home, my torso was well filled out. I used to have muscle and my stomach even had a thin layer of fat over it, but all of that is gone now. My muscle is gone and so is the fat; it’s replaced by protruding ribs and a flat, sucked-in belly. You’d never know that I grew up in a privileged household. The scars are all there, too. They’re everywhere – constant reminders of what I need to do to live.[/color]

My main weapons for fighting, the hands, are gnarled from weapons training and fighting. The fingers are long and thin, looking easily breakable, but far from it. My nails are chipped and torn, and I’m even missing a few whole nails on my left hand. One I lost in my first fight from clawing the boy as much as I could, and the others were destroyed from me developing a habit of scraping at the base of the bars and biting my nails. Both are terrible habits, but it’s my nervous tic. I need something[/color] to do in my prison cell other than dwell in misery. My feet, much like my hands, are rough, especially the soles. I like to keep my shoes on in my damp cell, but at times I just strip off the shoes and socks so they can air out and I go around barefoot. It can’t be good for my feet, but I have no choice. The nails on my toes are chipped and cracked too, but none are ripped off like on my fingers.

From being in such a “hard” environment, my knees and elbows always tend to be scraped up, which is also the cause of many of my scars. I also have a bad habit of picking at my scabs, which is probably a reason why I’m always catching infections.


[/color][/blockquote]

[/i][/color]
P E R S O N A L I T Y[/font][/size]

The dungeons are full of damp, dark, musky mold and dust. It’s not good for me at all. I’m allergic to pretty much all of it. Even back home, I was sneezing at everything. Flowers blooming? Endless sneezing. Leaves decaying and cold winter? Bed-ridden with influenza and a lung-hacking cough. Then it starts all over again. I’m the one in the family that always gets infected, sick with a virus, bloody noses at random times from even the slightest change in temperature, and whatever else is lurking around. But the funny thing is, I’m not conscious about germs at all. Sure, I wash my hands whenever I can and bathe as often as allowed, but both of those rarely happen. In the dungeons, if I get a gut-wrenching virus, I’m left to curl up in a ball, sit in my own retch, and just tough it all out. My immune system might as well just not exist, with all the times I’ve come down with any sort of illness.

Salt never gets sick, and though I envy her for just that, there’s nothing I can do. Being in this dank atmosphere, where germs and viruses spawn from the rot of food and wood, it’s my own kind of personal hell.

I often get lost inside my dreams. They used to be filled with innocent joys: friends, animals, even working in the mines and digging up stones. But now that’s all changed; I need to escape. All my thoughts are concentrating on getting past the metal bars that keep me cooped up like a feral animal. I am in a way, though.[/color] Constantly trying to string together plans, to observe Altiar (the idiot who kidnapped Salt and I in the first place[/color]) and figure out ways to sweet talk him into handing over the keys, to get around Bone (who is dumber than a rock[/color]), to actually snatch the food from Tiltoo’s (that snarky, good-for-nothing lady who I'd love to bash her skull in[/color]) grimy paws. It’s all I can think about now. I want to get out of these dungeons and I want to take my sister, Salt, with me. As much as I hate to admit it, if she hadn’t been abducted with me, I would have gone mentally insane by now. She keeps me grounded with a heavy dose of reality when my daydreams get too carried away and I tell her about my plans to escape. She also is the only one that can calm me down from my “rage stages.” Those are still new to me.[/color] I’ll get into more about that later.

Before I got into these dungeons, I valued life. Every life is important, every per has a basic human dignity. You treat others with respect and you get it back in return; help others and always repay your debts. If someone’s to be executed, you do it in a humane way because no one wants a painful death. But all that has changed drastically.[/color] I’ve been forced to fight for my own life, which I’ve found to be far more valuable than anyone else’s, aside from my sister’s and possibly even Chato’s. I would never put my sister after me – she’s all I have left and I owe it to her to protect her since it was me that got us into this mess in the first place. There’s memories of blood on my hands that won’t wash off; shavings of people’s skin underneath my nails that I can’t scrape out; tufts of hair that I’ve yanked out tickling my skin constantly. I’m not afraid to kill now. I won’t hesitate to snatch the life right out of you.[/color] Another person’s death means your salvation, so why not fight for yourself? The sooner you accept the fact that their death lets you walk away, the better chance you have of escaping. The battles I’ve won still haunt me – the skin, the blood, the hair[/color] – but I don’t regret any of it. They were all in the way of me achieving my daydreams of freedom with Salt and Chato, so they had to be dealt with.

That’s how I developed my uncontrollable rage in the ring. My love for life coupled with brotherly affection toward my sister somehow morphed me into this… this beast. Monster. Cretin. Bludgeoner.[/color] All these things I once never was, suddenly rolled into one package and labeled me.[/color] The moment I step into the ring is like opening that package – all neatly bound up with ribbon – and letting loose the demon. I never wanted to become this – never. It’s overwhelming force is like the avalanches in the Games: so powerful and raw that it can’t be stopped by anything human.[/color] Except Salt. She watched me bash some kid’s skull in with only my hands and a candlestick. She’s the one that calmed me down after my first fight – taming that storming tempest inside of me, bringing me crashing back down to a sobbing mess. I wasn’t crying for the boy I had killed – the tears were all for me. I was scared, so utterly scared at what I had become.[/color] I didn’t want to see myself like that again, but I had won.[/color] I murdered a boy and I had lived to see Salt and Chato again – so slowly I’m becoming adjusted to this monster inside of me. I actually like it. It’s keeping me alive so that I can keep my sister and only friend alive. This is a monster worth keeping around.[/color]


[/color][/blockquote]

tremble for yourself, my man,
you know that you have seen this all before
tremble, little lion man,
you'll never settle any of your scores
your grace is wasted in your face,
your boldness stands alone among the wreck
now learn from your mother or else spend your days biting your own neck

[/i]
H I S T O R Y[/font][/size]

So like I mentioned earlier, I grew up in a privileged household. My parents loved us, Salt and I. Compared to the others of the District, we had very nice stuff. Didn’t have to worry about food, or shelter, or jobs. Sure, we weren’t the richest, but we were comfortable.

I kept myself occupied with books and Career training, but I only did that for sport. I never did take it seriously. While Salt was off singing, I was in the training building, trying out new weapons and studying their shapes and sizes, trying to figure out how to best use it. Personally, I like the cat o’ nine tails, the flail, and the axe the best.

My parents never really pushed me to be the best Career out there, so I don’t believe that they cared much for me just going to training for the learning aspect.

I was also the brother who protected my little sister from overbearing jerks. That’s the only time I ever used to show any sort of anger or rage toward anyone. It’s unbelievable how slowly some boys mature.[/color] Helping my sister was easy, but taking my own advice is very hard. I did meet one girl once… she was very nice, and attractive, too. I actually tried talking to her (this was in the spring, mind you[/color]) and, of course, I couldn’t help my sneezing. She must have been repulsed by it, because I never saw her again. That really put a downer on my spirits, but eventually I was over it. Sure, the spot with her is still a little sore, but if she can’t understand that my immune system is crap and that the limit to my allergies does not exist, she’s not worth it. I was a bit crushed by her sudden and quick rejection, so I turned back to focus on my Career “training.”

That was when I first met Altair. Now his name might as well be a synonym with maggot.[/color] He was at the training center when I was there once, and I noticed him watching me. I tried to keep my back to him, but he approached me, asking who I was. Being polite, I answered with my full name, and he asked me to take him to my parents for some business thing. At the time, I didn’t know any better. I just thought he was a part of my parents’ merchant business, so I took him home. [/color] As we entered into the kitchen, he attacked me from behind. He had me immobilized when Salt came home from her singing lesson, and I became terrified for her. There wasn’t much I could do anyway; he got a hold of her and that was that. I couldn’t stop him.

Salt and I were thrown into cells – the dungeons[/color] – and have been there ever since. The first few days were rough: being stuck behind bars was something that neither of us was used to, and the taunting was hell. I’m still waiting for the chance to gnaw off Tiltoo’s hand. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you? If it doesn’t actually feed you, feel free to snap at it.[/color] I honestly think that she’s the worst of all of them. She’s always taunting us with food when our bellies are so hallow it’s painful; she cackles at our misfortune; and I firmly believe she disrespects the bodies of the kids that have died. I’ve never personally seen her do it, but I’m sure she does bad things to the corpses. They’re easy targets and all Tiltoo can do is taunt easy targets, but that’ll change when we get the upper hand. I’m thinking up a plan.[/color] Bone isn’t as bad as her, but he’s still a piece of rotten egg. It was him that threw me into the ring for my first fight, I think.

For my first fight, I was utterly terrified. All I was given to defend myself with was a candlestick, which obviously can’t do much damage.[/color] But that’s also when the monster[/color] first decided to rear its ugly head. I wanted to live, dammit. Talk about letting your instincts take over – I became completely feral.[/color] All the other boy did was scratch me. It was hardly a serious scratch, but I flung myself at him and beat him to death with that candlestick, all the while feeling possessed by some primitive being. The dungeon has just one simple rule: kill or be killed. And I was going to kill.[/color] Murdering was – and still is – the only way to escape. It doesn’t look like Salt, Chato, and I are getting out anytime soon, and we’re still being tossed into the ring for some stupid “tournament.” It goes against everything I once believed in, but I need this monster[/color] to help me survive and keep Salt and Chato alive.

One day we’ll all escape. One day we’ll be able to bask in the sunlight again. And maybe one day I’ll actually be able to bite Tiltoo’s hand off.


[/color][/blockquote]

but it was not your fault but mine
and it was your heart on the line
i really fucked it up this time
didn't i, my dear?

main
talking
thinking
others talking
lyrics/quotes
[/blockquote][/justify][/size]