rust, dust & guts | tar moil v zane [day 3]

It's funny, how it works. Spend half your life in poverty struggling to survive, and you seem to thrive in the Games, or at the very least aren't reasonably threatened. Train for half your life because of your home's militaristic culture? Well, that seems to lower your survival odds by quite a bit.

I'm not sure how or why the girl from Two who'd teamed up with Bastian to expel me from the bloodbath is the sole face to shine in the sky that night, yet the petty part of me feels a small amount of vindication nonetheless. Seems every Career I touch has had some sort of misfortune befall them - the Ones lost limbs, the Twos and Four their lives, and it seems fitting that the Four girl, the one I have yet to interact with, is the only one who, to my knowledge, has had no amount of misfortune fall upon her. My own luck always seemed better than usual for a street rat from Nine; perhaps it's so great that the karma I've built up over eighteen long years befalls upon my immediate enemies instead of myself.

So far, anyway. One could argue that simply by being here, I'm already paying for each and every sin I've notched up back home and then some.

But five kids are dead, including three Careers, and the worst opposition I've had to face after that first day is an overgrown bird. Really, in the grand scheme of things? Things could be worse.

I know that staying in one spot too long is a recipe for disaster (or maybe that's just the seventeen years I lived before Gunner and I became sort of a thing whispering paranoia in my ear) so after cleaning and stitching myself up to the best of my ability, it's another day on the move. The arenas are supposedly around ten miles from one point of its edge to the next, so as long as I practically circle the Cornucopia, I should be fine.

Of course, with each passing day and each new location the chances of me stumbling upon a rival or even a set of rivals increases, and when that day comes I'm honestly not sure what I'm going to do. Run? Stand my ground? Let death claim me like what I thought I was going to do way back on the first day? Will luck be on my side, and I'll find myself a murderer twice or even thrice over?

Who. Fucking. Knows.

The weather is hot and uncomfortable, but even the heat's attempt to kill my appetite is starting to wear thin on my third day of minimal food and water, and as I trek across the wilderness sans shirt any reserves I might have are melting out into the sweat on my skin. Dimly, I hear Cara's voice, warning me that extended exposure in the sun will hurt like a bitch at best and give me some sort of incurable cancer at worse, but right now those are the last of my concerns.

It's ironic that Cara was always the one that preached caution and carefulness, and yet she was taken from this earth three years before I even faced my first real brush with death. Heh. Karma at its finest, indeed.

It must be hours later when a landmark appears on the horizon, because the sun is shining bright overhead and the heat is getting to be damn near unbearable. But I have yet to hear a cannon or even see another soul appear in the wild, and that makes me antsy.

Ever hear about people yappin' about how things get too quiet sometimes? The calm before the storm, the deathly quiet before a gang war or a Keeper blows your home to smithereens? Yeah, that's what I felt, here and now. No rivals, no threats, no nothing.

So of course it happens to be a mutt. Because one oversized bird wasn't enough.

This one is quite different - small, gray, a rodent of some sort, one that thinks that ramming me is an effective method of attack (and it's not wrong. Though it's far from breaking anything, the impact is like getting kicked - smarts, and will probably leave a bruise in the morning). And I know I should be scared, or at the very least worried. But I'm also hungry, thirsty (in the literal sense, for once), and tired from my hours-long trek in the sun.

So mainly? I'm just annoyed.

"You know," I say, exasperation filling my tone as I toss my bag and shirt aside. "I'm really-" withdraw sword "-not-" pinpoint target "-in the-" aim "-mood!"

Fire.

There were a few things I expected to face when I woke up this morning. The beating down of the heat, one or more of my rivals in the arena, a long trek to keep myself moving and not get too comfortable or predictable, the unrelenting dread of my own inner thoughts and demons.

Having an argument with a rodent that, to my knowledge, has no eyes while it tries to ram itself up against me? Now that's something I'd expect after an acid trip, not heat exhaustion.

But the creature is real and loud and persistent and honestly I'm not quite sure what the game here is because if a giant bird can't off me then what's this thing supposed to do? Annoy me to death?

Heh. How the turntables turn. Annoying someone to death a month ago would be the only way I could ever have imagined killing someone, and it'd be said with a laugh and clearly meant in a joking way. Now? I can barely manage a fraction of that energy, and have instead become the Annoyed.

Ah well. If this is my trial today, well, might as well fucking get it over with, huh?

"Squeak squeak yourself, mothersqueaker!" I say back in my best imitation of the rodent's voice. I always did wonder if animals understood it when you imitated them or if it just sounded like gibberish.

Well, if words won't get my message across, maybe my weapon will.

So today I learned that the mutts in this arena have enough of a rudimentary intelligence to understand my half-assed squeak speech. And judging by the way the rodent's demeanor changes, the message was received loud and clear.

Perhaps provoking it wasn't the best move, considering everything, but at this point I couldn't care. Still, its latest slam into my leg hurts, and even if the thing is a ways off from killing me I can't get complacent. Better tributes than I have died to less threatening things than this rodent, and while I know death is ready and waiting for my daredevil ass to join them like they have for all eighteen years of my life, I have standards, okay?

And dying to a blind rodent falls far, far beneath them.

"Oh, go squeak yourself," I mutter, before swinging yet again.

I find myself missing the bird from yesterday. Hell, I even find myself missing the chaos that was the bloodbath. Because in both scenarios, the targets were large and clear enough that me, with my minimal training and sheer dumb luck, could still cause lethal damage with some sheer dumb luck tossed into the midst.

But this thing - this squeaky, annoying, blind little thing - has thus far proved too elusive for me to pin down and kill. I can't imagine how this is entertaining for the folks back at the Capitol. I can't imagine this is any good for my reputation, be it with Avriel or the non-existent sponsors I'm trying to impress.

Well. I guess I did say yesterday to not put his hopes on me.

For some reason, this irritates me. The heat, the sweat running down my back, my own incompetence, the relentless squeaking of this rodent - it's all adding up. And now I'm pretty good at keeping my emotions in check - hell, I've gotten beaten to within an inch of my life back home and all I did was laugh as long as someone was watchin' me - but this? This is damn near frustrating.

With an angry shout, I swing again, any semblance of fun melting like my sanity into the wind.

Just die already.

Funny how it's when I surrender to my anger that I finally land a solid hit on the rodent, especially after my whole internal monologue as to how emotions have never worked for me. The irony there, that giving into your own weakness or something like that and turning it into your strength is the way you succeed, isn't lost on me.

But there's still breath inside the body of that damn mutt, and the squeaking is getting on my nerves. And I'm sure there's more shit I could contemplate about while striking it down but really, I'm just tired, and the squeaking is getting on my nerves.

So I strike one last time, quick and fast, hoping to end it then and there.