his technicolor break . tyrone day 4

"I just need a minute," Tyrone tells Cedric, backing away from Luya's fallen corpse and toward the ladders. Sadness overwhelms him. It was a new day, and a chance to turn on a new leaf, but all he finds is deja vu. One person falls and everyone scatters, leaving him to pick up the broken pieces. He can't stare at her too long. It's too similar to Ginny. Ty remembers vividly how long it took for them to let her go. They dragged her body across the crater basin in the jeep until the hovercraft above them began to lower. This time, they likely would not be as patient. It's Day Four, after all, and they usually want to end things by day eight or nine. The Game Makers wade away pleasantries and ceremonial goodbyes with each day, forcing the carnage and instinct of survival to grow in lust.

The ladder is sturdy up against the outpost above. With every rung that he clears, his fear of heights grows. Tyrone is weary of the other tributes still being in the vicinity and eager to shoot another one of them down. But he makes it up alright, a few dozen feet above ground level. He looks down to see Cedric watching from below. Surely, Cedric will abandon him the moment that Tyrone looks away for too long. He can't expect anything less. He knows that Ty is an unreliable ally who can only kill the things that don't matter. He struck down two dinosaurs on the second day, but when it comes to the human on human combat, he only knows how to crumble.

His arms clutch the railing as he makes his way to the door of the outpost, ready to loot whatever is inside. To his surprise, an assortment of television screens and computer monitors mount every wall, along with a few gadgets, buttons, and levers here or there. Tyrone looks on with intrigue. He's never seen this much technology in one place before. District Eight had its fair share of advancements, but this type of set-up could only be from the likes of the Capitol, or the techy districts of Three or Six.

One of the control panels has a handful of marked buttons. Some of them just with numbers or codes, but other ones with things that Ty is actually able to understand. One reads Press Me while the one next to it says Press Me More. He presses the first, expecting it to drop some sort of item that could be of use to him. But instead, nothing happens. He continues to scan the room, figuring that someone else must have gotten to it before him. It has been four days, after all.

A shadow forms from the window. He looks over to see an entire crane arm casting itself downward toward the ground. Luya. He rushes over to the window against his better judgment, pressing his hands up against the glass and looking down. The Game Makers dropped the crane incredibly close to the building he stands it. They must have been precise and careful not to hit the building. That would be a tragic misstep, to kill your tribute on accident.

The girl from Eleven rises in the air with the metal arm as it retracts back up toward the hovercraft. Tyrone can see her eyes from inside the outpost, her hair flies through the air as if they were all in the jeep again, heads hanging out the window with smiles on their faces. How lucky they were to have that moment, but how naive Tyrone was to assume it'd last. Now, only the memories remain. Cedric's joyrides couldn't possibly be joyful anymore, with two of their teammates gone with the wind. Luya's arm dangles alongside the crane. He can see little drops of blood still plummeting from her body back toward the ground. She's really gone, now.

Tyrone didn't want to cry again, but he finds himself breaking down anyway as Luya's corpse slowly falls out of the window's frame of view. The lights on the computers begin to turn on and off, flashing in an assortment of deep and dark colors. The rays of blood-red and ocean blue blind him for a moment, straining his eyes immediately. It's just like the stories he'd heard about raves in the abandoned warehouses of District Eight. Parties were never his speed, even when his parents encouraged him to have fun so long as he didn't get too drunk.

Ty's eyes squint to appease the flashing lights, but with tight eyes comes a release of tears. He drops his rifle and bag on the ground before falling to his knees. Sounds of struggling machinery begin to accompany the assortment of lights. The screeching sounds leave a piercing ring in his ears. The sounds of his sobs get muffled and drowned out by the sensory overlord surrounding him. Pain from the chaos in the room numbs his jaw and his fingers tingle while they grip in between the floorboards.

"I can't keep doing this," he says between frozen teeth. "I can't.. I.." His fingers wrap around his fallen machete. He's weighed down by fear and pain, crawling towards the flashing screens at the desks. They go from white to red, red to blue, yellow, pink, green, and black, then the cycle repeats again. The static sound amplifies as he gets closer to the computers. They're causing it, too.

He stands himself up with the help of the wooden chairs. The tears stray from his eyes still, making his sight even blurrier than the flashing lights already made them.

These things need to shut up.

Tyrone swings the machete at the scream, cracking it over and over again. He lets out a whimper with each swing, consuming more energy than he should be willing to give four days into a fight to the death.

But Ty doesn't know what else to do. There is no making this pain better, especially not in an intensive environment like this.

Once one screen powers down, Tyrone goes on to the next, letting every emotion left in his body crumble to shards the size of pixels.

It doesn't make him feel better, not in the slightest. Perhaps that's not his intention. Maybe it's so he can feel nothing at all.

Feel Hope-Less.