a red dawn / Double Homicide vs Mutts

"Oh, she passed away? Huh. All right.”

Arthur had watched the anthem queue in the sky above, with soaring trumpets and banging drums, only to reveal Aurora, Iden, Anarchy, and Jack had died. As the embers from the lava crackling on soared behind them, Arthur kept turning the handle of his baseball bat between his palm. Aurora had taken a swing at him and he’d gone for fish boy, so it seemed like a blessing that both of them were dead now. He hadn’t killed them, and it meant that of the tributes he’d taken a swing at in the bloodbath, only one of them remained somewhere in the arena.

But beyond that, he couldn’t bring himself to muster much of anything for each of them. He felt like shit sitting them against hard gravel, his face covered in a make-shift bandana mask, stomach growling, and throat parched. Even with four deaths it meant nineteen others had to die before he could get out of here, an awful long way to go even if another four died tomorrow. What he wanted was to be sitting at the edge of the couch in his brother’s studio sipping a lukewarm beer and snacking on a bag of potato chips watching pirated capitol television. Not risking his life sleeping next to the long-haired god worshipping freak from eleven.

They’d slept a few paces apart, both to position themselves between the lava flows for protection and from the diminishing trust Abel and Arthur had for one another.

He still heard the boy from eleven weeping, though Arthur had pretended not to stir from his spot. This wasn’t because he didn’t want to embarrass the poor kid, but that if he got up from his spot, it’d meant he’d have to engage with Abel about why he was crying. For Arthur, he’d gone through the list of possible reasons and decided that none of them were worth talking about. Did he miss home? Well too fucking bad. Arthur missed his home and he wasn’t a whiny little bitch about it. His family? He needed to forget the fascists that had raised him anyway. Or maybe he was afraid to die? Whatever. It wouldn’t be that long anyway.

So, he’d spent his time rolling over in the dirt, doing his best to let out a little snore to convince Abel he’d had no idea he’d heard his blubbering the whole time.

At some point he’d drifted off to a dreamless sleep and woke to a red dawn, muggy and turgid, still baking against soot and ash.

They’d gathered their things in silence and set out toward the depression in the earth some points southwest of their position. They’d started down into the crater basin, footsteps echoing up. Arthur had been distracted as they walked thinking about how he was going to eat the lunchables in his backpack and drink all the water he’d gotten yesterday, even though he knew he needed to save them both for as long as possible. His stomach kept growling and his already sour mood was headed toward catastrophic. In the moments before the attack, he’d spied the girls across the way, and raised a hand to wave at what he thought was Tsara.

He should’ve been paying more attention to the horrific creations hopping toward them.

The first half-kangaroo, half-tyrannosaurus rex had walloped Abel but not terribly. It was the second that came to lunge directly for Arthur’s arm.

“Fucking fuck!” Arthur yelled out as Dawn tore into his flesh. He could hear Abel shouting about not trying to move, “WELL THANKS GENIUS MY FUCKING ARM IS ABOUT TO GET RIPPED OFF SURE I WON’T MOVE!”

He had to thank Abel at least, because the fear that should’ve been coursing through his veins had been replaced with unbridled rage. He pulled back his baseball bat and took as hard a swing he could at the beast’s wide forehead, hoping to mash it to mush.

“HRRRAHHH!”

[Arthur Rollei D3M attacks Dawn (kangarex) with his Razor-wire Bat (spiked blunt)]

"Oh come onnnnn…” Arthur groaned watching Abel’s blow dart go wide. The kid couldn’t even hit the thing sitting right in front of his face. Stupid. Hadn’t the nimrod spent his whole time trying to train in the training center? Fat load of good that had done. Arthur had preferred not to take advantage of the cavalcade of trainers if only because he’d always been relatively good at fucking things up, so why would he take advice from a bunch of punk capitol flunkies when it came to smashing shit? He had two eyes, two sets of hands, and a brain – for now, anyway.

“Look alive out there Abel. Come on man,” Arthur hissed.

The creature lunged for Abel but didn’t get quite as much flesh in its maw. At least now it was two versus one, though Arthur could see a scenario in which one of them got their legs bitten off or the other his skull pulverized to mush. And as much as he thought Abel should’ve been Abel to hit the thing that was standing right in front of him, he didn’t want him to die. Not at this stage. They’d got at least four or five more days of lava flows, lizard-beasts, and tributes before they were a one another’s throats.

This was going to be hell, wasn’t it?

“Hey big boy, let’s fucking go already huh?” Arthur paced forward, bat pointed at the kangarex. He tapped one of his shoes with the edge of the bat and took a stance like he was going to make a line drive. Part of him kept thinking about how his sort-of-companion hadn’t done the job, which left Arthur to do it for him. Color him surprised that that would be the start of their relationship. Abel had a lot to learn, which was bad news for him, considering how bad a teacher Arthur was.

“He swings for the bleachers!” Arthur mock-announced as he started toward boomer. He picked up speed before taking a good, hard swing at the lizard-brain’s trunk.


[Arthur attacks Boomer with his Razor-Wire Bat (spiked blunt)]