Icing over a secret Pain {D12 Vs. Orbs // Day 6}

Wait... that's.... not......

Wrong.

Wrong.

Wrong.

Wrong.

Fingers try to hold together the floodgates of guilt, but the troubled torrents run too rapidly. Red mixes with darkness and metal ruins the air. Her heart has stopped beating, but still he cannot pry himself away from her fallen form. He said he hadn't cared. He said he was fine with the results of probability. But as she bleeds and the night crowns its new prince, he wishes the gun had been pointed inward. Alas, all the regret in the world doesn't stop Oblivion from condensing inward into the nothingness of her name.

Her canon fires.

He stays by her side, knees deep in the pool of her blood.

Could the world see it again?

The cost of being a spare, even if born out of bravery.

While the world around him revives, Orion is short circuited. Every subtle sound or clamorous clank of metal merges into severe shivering. He can still feel it, Oblivion's dried blood covering his palms. He knows he should wash it off, yet all he can manage is to sit and shake. How were the others doing this? Shoving swords into skin, carving knives into bones. How are they able to walk away after knowing the sound of a skull they shattered? But Orion already knows the answer.

To survive.

Straightforward, simple, Darwinism.

They do whatever is necessary to survive.

Clearly, so does he.

Somewhere between the shock and the science, a phantom forms from the darkness. A crown of antlers admits its reign over the shadows as its near silent steps seem to alter the atmosphere. Its eyes although somber, seem to stare into the cracks of Orion's soul. It stops, it watches, it waits. And the whispered words of Orion's lips appear without thought, without consideration. Raw, real, broken.

"I wish Larceny Theft had actually died."

Suddenly the sounds surge in an uncontrollable waterfall.

"I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be afraid of everything... I wouldn't..."

Something cool kisses the back of Orion's hands. He didn't even realize he was crying.

"I wouldn't want to kill again."

Because deep down, he knows he's a monster. He knows that the guilt he feels isn't from the murder, but the fascination it sparked within him. Without Larceny being alive, without being in these Games, he would still be a nice boy lost in basic bliss. He wouldn't be addicted to the adrenaline his actions have given him. He wouldn't know the sinister seduction of watching an equation physically take form. He wouldn't want so badly to see the equation finished.

It's like an interactive experiment, one he has previously been blind to.

His mind stops, caught cold by confession. He starts to shake even swifter. His fingers furl inward until little bubbles of blood form beneath his fingernails. What's happening to him? Has he lost his mind? To be numb to it all is one thing, to actually take interest in the actions of the arena from a scientific standpoint is another. Could he really be this boy now? Could he really just... Orion suddenly stops shaking.

The quiet creature nuzzles him, and its unexpected tender touch eases Orion's panic.

He falls into sleep.

Morning emerges with an edge of uncertainty. Orion's entire body feels uneasy, set off by his thoughts in the night. He's calmer now, but disarray still exists beneath the surface of his skin. His hands are stained in rusted red and his soul stumbles in a shroud of lost identity. Can the watching world sense the crumbling of his core thrusted into chaos? Can Cyril?

Thinking of his ally, Orion wonders whether Cyril heard anything that he shared to the shadows' spirit. Part of him wants to ask, but another part isn't even sure whether the spirit exists or not. The night was dark and draped in delirium, who's to say his mind didn't make up the beast? Orion opts to address another issue at last.

"I know you know this, but it was dark. I didn't know it was her."

He speaks to his ally in the same calm and computive tone he's carried since birth.

"But it was quick, she didn't suffer much. Her death shouldn't stop us from working together because there's still ten others out there."

Orion turns towards the open airlock to the outside world.

"And our best option is to find them first."

Swiping his watch by a nearby storage container, Orion wriggles his way into a kind of space suit that's perfectly fitted to his size. For a moment he hovers over Industria's container, running a hand along the letters of her name. She was from home, but even in the end she followed the dynamics of Darwin and tried to kill him. He mourns her loss, but he doesn't miss her.

Outside Orion finally finds the source of the invading snow. Orion has only an instant of inspection before the voice of Red Stone finds his ears. She stands with her head shaking but with a sword as red as the wrath of her will. He remembers her story, her sister and of the home she left. They shared space once before everything began, before the equation had to be completed. She knows it too, and she acts on it first.

"You're correct, avoidance is an invalid option at this stage."

Orion's mind already is beginning to form a strategy as he speaks his first set of words. And in the moment, he feels it again. Deep down he's almost excited with anticipation. Oh how far he's come in such a short amount of time.

"But for what it's worth, I hoped for the same."

Orion's own sword bursts to life and he strikes for Red's center. Lucky for her it isn't her own body, its the boy's with her.

Success.

It's presence paints the white world of winter red and redefines reality. What was once a leg to a boy born of royal renown, now is nothing more than a lifeless limb. The effectiveness of the magnets in its boot merely managing to maintain its dangling form. Beneath it, the void of the arena's existence is showered in scarlet. And Orion stands clearly as the culprit, Cedar's blood still singeing off the length of his cyber sword. Could Zeus see him now? Has he become the huntsman he was written in the stars to become?

And beneath the sweltering summer of sorrow churned by the gruesome winds of guilt, the feeling of excitement surges.

Every piece of the puzzle is falling into focus. Every algorithm is trending in a direction Orion once considered unobtainable. His equation is advancing closer and closer towards the deepest desire he's held secret since saving the life of his savior, he could win. Perhaps its the increasing probability of the possibility. Perhaps its hope which turns a severed limb into an optimal outcome.

Hell, Orion is almost giddy at the fact that...

He stops.

The humming heart of his saber silences.

Orion's eyes stare at Cedar, stare at the damage that's been dealt. And suddenly a gravity greater than that of a dying star sends Orion's sword spinning into the mist. He's stunned, stumbling backwards into one of the bridge's cables. Beyond the crying clouds of his center, he crumbles inward. It doesn't surprise him that what follows next are sudden spurts of hyperventilation. His skin is cold but not from the frost, from the truth.

They aren't numbers. They aren't just variables needing to solved and accounted for. This isn't just some word problem he needs to decipher and decode. Somewhere in the shadows he didn't lose his vision, he lost sight of his humanity. People calling him a robot didn't make him one, but finding euphoria in the completion of such an abominable equation without restraint certainly does.

Orion Starcrest is not a robot.

Orion Starcrest is not a huntsman honored by Zeus.

Orion Starcrest is an awkward quiet boy beloved by the functions of mathematics. A boy who speaks at least from a base of basic morals when his emotions are too complex to compile. That's how he got here in the first place, and it's how he is going stay, despite the cost. His fingers furl around the cables as his eyes shut for only a second. And in that second, his equation ends.

The Answer : No solution.

His eyes open back to the world of war, but he barely feels Red's blade slide across his skin. He had let himself become broken, let them believe for a moment they could code him to become another entity entirely. And he praises himself on his brain. Orion's teeth grind together, it's pitiful. He said he'd solve their puzzles, yet they played him all along. But no more.

"Then prove your proposition."

Orion suddenly surges forward, his fingers finding a new hold onto Cedar's suit. For once, he doesn't see a number to take into account. He sees a face not much different than his own. Another boy fighting a battle far from home. Orion hands shove him away hard.

"Save me by saving him. I was wrong, find the real answer to the equation that's been asked by tributes from my District for decades."

Can they hear him now?

Can they see that he now understands the truth?

"How does twenty three equal one?" Orion turns entirely towards Red now, although he hopes Cyril can hear his words too. "And if you find yourself as the one, ask: why? Then find an answer bigger than twenty three."