erupting tempers.— [double homicide (day one)]

All around him was annihilation.

A bit too on the nose if anyone had asked him, the sight of lava tracking along a pair of gentle sloping hills. He’d never seen anything quite like it in three and could only marvel at the gentle glow of red and orange molten rock curdling within reach. For a moment he couldn’t hate their creation, if only that he’d get to bathe in the warmth of the earth opening up for each of them some days before his inevitable death. He took a moment to focus his camera on the bones protruding up from the earth along the curve of another lava flow before snapping another photograph.

Abel darted forward, hardly pausing to take in the landscape, singularly focused. Arthur tasted burning tires and smoke at the back of his throat. He wrapped his bandana around his face to block the ash in the cross breezes. He figured that it probably wasn’t the best thing for his lungs to be taking in volcanic ash and gas. He couldn’t afford to cut a few days off his life at this point.

“Get real, Abel. I’m not giving you my darts and blow gun for some expired meat and an iodine tablet. I already got some of those from a sponsor anyway.” Arthur shook his head as he spoke. The kid had an axe and was offering him nonsense for one of the two weapons he’d picked up. Maybe he was smarter than he looked. “No deal. You give me the axe and I might be able to part with the stupid blow gun.”

He tugged at his handkerchief as he pulled it up over his nose again. He was shit with his aim as it was, and he didn’t need to be trying to kill someone with blow darts if they were going to be swinging a machete at him. Arthur might as well have had something to hack the limbs from the other tributes if he was going to go down swinging. He took his bag off his shoulders and crouched against the black rocks at his feet.

“Here it is. You say the word, I’ll leave it out and you can leave your axe there. Then we can figure out how the hell this is going to work with us. If it is going to work,” He said, serious doubts already bubbling up through his stomach. He had to be an idiot to trust the bible-kid from eleven wasn’t going to shank him in his sleep, right?

He stared out over the dunes for a moment and watched a set of figures amble along. Tributes.

“I’d rather go alone but this is the best offer either of us is going to get.”

Back in three, Arthur had surrounded himself with people who danced around the big picture rather than getting lost in detail. They preferred spontaneity, of arms-length independence, and rolling over disagreement on to the next, rather than dwelling on the past. In his estimation, Abel would not have been one of the boys in the red light of his brother’s photo studio, careful to measure agreement or to remain unoffended by a harsh critique. He dwelled on details and found solace in the definitive. It was no wonder they were so diametrically opposed to one another, Rollei ready to cross the dunes a night, guided by the glow of lava while O’Malley wanted to pitch a tent.

At least they managed to make a trade. Arthur was quick to snatch up the axe in his hands, though there crept a grim reality over his shoulders holding the handle between his fingers. It was heavier than the blow gun and carried with it a price. Somehow, Arthur knew that he’d use it to cleave off a limb or through sinew and bone. He swallowed done whatever held him back and licked his lips to taste new fortitude.

That and the ash floating around through the air.

“You’re one to talk. Are you always so pissy all the time or was that just something that was whipped into you back in eleven?” Arthur spoke, standing from his spot in the gravel and hold he axe in one hand. He looked out over the lava flows and motioned to his face. “You really ought to put your bandana over your mouth, dude. Breathing in the ash and shit isn’t going to be good for you. And who knows if the gamemakers don’t send some toxic cloud tonight to fuck with us.”

He wondered about referring to them as ‘us’, as though to imply they were really working together. It was more a mutually exclusive pairing that by design, meant he’d reciprocate if anyone attacked and vice-versa. But it didn’t mean he would have to like the boy or get to know anything about him. Which to his estimation was the best, whether he had to cut Abel loose at some point or abandon him, it’d be easier to keep a physical and emotional distance.

“Yeah, I guess we can stay here. I only saw that other group over the hills, I don’t think most of them went the same direction as us. Though I can see why, now.” He gave a shrug at the literal hellscape around him.

“Happy to have the axe. Though I wouldn’t mind getting something that helped me crush a few skulls,” Arthur mused. He’d admired the tributes that carried around weapons with greater surface area. Seemed harder to miss, and more likely to fracture a competitor to pieces. He shook his head. “At least someone seems to be paying attention to me though. Feel like I can hardly carry much more in my backpack at this point.”