What you say you are ~ [Py/Pearl]

Pearl Millison

She was taking a break.

An assortment of chocolate-coated fruits were displayed in the Dining Hall. Victors like her mother were indulging themselves, but Pearl gripped only a bottle of water in her right hand, gulping it every so often as she gazed enviously at the consumers. Technically she could treat herself without making herself sick. She would just have to control her portions and limit herself to one or two fruits. Stranded between strawberries and apples slices, she lingered by the table until an unmistakable chirp made her head perk. ”Taking a break, sweetie?”

”Yeah,” she muttered, and then tuned out the rest of her mother’s rantings until she had popped two strawberries past her lips. Then she announced that she was finished with her break, and sauntered back to the training room.

The weight of her mother’s words were always enough to crush her spirit. It always reminded her that no matter what she accomplished in this room – intimidating the other tributes with her abilities, making friends, earning the attention of potential sponsors – she was likely to fail in the Game itself. This Games wouldn’t be about her survival skills, her allies, or her money. Not even her mother’s fame could save her. It was her heart that didn’t meet the standards. She was a cowering wimp plagued by morals and terror and even queasiness at the sight of blood. She often couldn’t finish a meal after watching something gruesome happen in the Games.

There was no use listening to her mother’s repetitive snips of advice. It was all for naught.

She returned to her normally-abandoned knife station, only to find that a boy occupied its space. She knew his name already – Animus Valentine. She had memorized every name and visage for her own benefit. It wouldn’t make killing them any easier, but she was already under the assumption that she would perish before the rest. He was awkwardly prodding one of the hyper realistic dummies with a knife, making blood dribble from a puncture in the shoulder. Everything he was doing was completely wrong, but it was none of her business, right?

She ended up standing near his shadow, and cleared her throat gently, voice resembling the squeak of a mouse. ”You’re holding it wrong,” she mumbled, and withdrew a knife of her own to show him what it was supposed to look like. ”Like this. And then you should aim for the chest instead of the shoulder.”

Pearl Millison

Her mother would be scolding her right now. ”What are you doing talking to some runt from a lower district?” She would probably say, lacking the courtesy to censor her offensive language. Ruby Millison was one of the more judgmental victors, and careers of an identical personality type were not uncommon. Pearl knew nothing of what lower districts were like due to her upbringing, but watching the Games on television taught her as much as she could possibly know. The lower the district, the scrawnier the tributes appeared to be. The Twelves were like walking stick figures, and there was no denying why. It was the poverty. They never discussed it, but it was real. Why? She didn’t know. She couldn’t understand it. Were exports like coal just not as profitable?

”Yes, and you’re Animus?” she asked, already prepared to confirm her knowledge. No name would be lost to her in this Games. She had been trained to memorize every existing opponent like a machine.

”Is there, erm, is there anything I could know about knives?"

A terrible little voice piped up from the shadows of her conscience. It sounded vaguely like her mother’s chastising tone, and it warned her that sharing knowledge with an inexperienced fighter was a bad idea. Teaching a potentially harmless kid how to kill, so he might kill her later?

Everybody should have an equal chance. Stupid as it might be in her mother or sister’s opinion, Pearl continued on. ”Well, you can know that there are different types and sizes. The one you’re holding is better for forward jabs and horizontal slices. These,” She plucked a throwing knife from the nearby rack. ”Are specialized for throwing, but they can still be used like regular knives. You just have to hold them differently because they’re shorter. Like this,” she extended her hand palm up to reveal her finger placement.