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gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.
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last seen Nov 5, 2024 2:58:43 GMT -5

aspiring beam of light

☆ 90th pts's ☆ Feb 24, 2022 21:51:16 GMT -5

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Post by gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin. on Feb 24, 2022 21:51:16 GMT -5

You sit in the waiting area, patient, hands folded across your lap. You breathe in evenly, paying attention to the motion. There is nothing else in this room that deserves your attention.

You've spent every day learning the ins and outs of the mechanical workings inside that room. Each session, you've searched for the control panel to take out the lights, even think you found the sliver in the wall where you could bring down the barrier between you and the GM's if the right projectile were to make it's way there, but you're not sure, and more importantly you're not interested.

This is a show, not a threat.

You go over your preparations in your head, quickly, take note of where each item is at the moment. In corners and crevices you've hidden traps for you to take out during your private session, little devices rigged to blow, pressure plates turned little land mines ready to be placed. They told you that you weren't supposed to do that, that special items were to be declared and asked for ahead of time, but.

You've always preferred being unexpected.

Besides, you didn't feel like sitting in that room fiddling with wires and a set of pliers. It's a skill, surely, one that years and years of paying far too close attention in math and science classes has taught you, but it's not really what you're trying to show off.

When you walk through the door, you go for the bow first, take a hardpoint arrow and draw it taut. You know that a standard likely wouldn't be able to break through the metal. The angle is odd, pointed slightly up and looking almost directly at the gamemakers, but your eyes aren't on them. There's a control panel to the right of their little box. An arrow through the metal casing it in, and the lights blink in and out a few times as the panel crackles and then pitches the room into darkness.

An eerie light glows over the edge of the GM's viewing box, the lights there controlled from another location. You expected as much.

You creep through the shadows, duck behind the pillars and various stations, hiding from their sight. Darting between darknesses, light feet lightning quick, girl turned shadow, you set your playing field.

You've hidden your devices across the room, five different traps for the automatons that you had requested join you in this fight, only the final strings needing pulling. You've fought these kind of machines before in Four, remember taking down versions of them at the Academy, practicing your land mines on their pathetic mechanical legs. And you didn't even have all the materials there that you have here. Six traps total, two you've set for yourself, and you're ready.

At the end of running through the shadows and doing the final riggings on the traps you've been prepping all week, you know that the time you asked for is almost over. You'd requested five minutes exactly, and you're counting them in your head. Twenty-seven seconds left, you grab a stuffed training dummy off the rack and dump it unceremoniously in the middle of the practice ring, give the GM's another example of your skills and set the goddamned thing ablaze.

You had to do something for your brother. Just one.

The image of the gamemakers in their safe little box flickers behind the flames, shifting with the light, and you think yours must do the same for them. Good, let them see you only in flashes. Let them see you distorted.

Six seconds to spare, and they send them in early.

The first trap is basic, a wire pulled across the door the machines enter through. Rigged to a simple bucket hung over the door, out falls one of the weights. You don't blink when the machines head disappears into its shoulders, caved in. There's four more coming behind it.

You don't know if they have night vision or not, but half this show is about stealth, dexterity, avoidance, so you slink back to your shadows and try not to let them see you. From where you hide, you throw one of the daggers at your hips, aiming for the chink in the armored exterior where knee meets shin and send it toppling forward over itself, the clanking of metal scraping against the floor grating at the very least.

The second trap is fun, the kind of thing that makes even you smile. A large pressure plate placed near the plants station, the floor explodes up from underneath them like a landmine. You'd had to fiddle with wires so delicately you thought you'd go cross eyed, but the end result is worth it. With the explosion, glow in the dark paint. Now your enemy is shining in the dark like a beacon, neon pink against the shadows, and you notch another hardpoint and aim. Bright pink scattered upwards across the machine's body, you lodge the arrow where carotid would be.

Intentionally, you trigger your own trap this time. And then a second, a mad dash of dexterity as you dart out of the way of a falling spear from the rafters. It'd taken you twenty minutes to figure out how to crawl up there the first time, had to shimmy your way up between two pillars, but you think the sight of you avoiding it just about makes the aches you'd felt in your hips afterward worth it. A pressure plate under the trip wire creates a mini explosion you have to avoid and you have to leap up at the same time, spin around yourself and do a sideways flip for fear of leaping too high and finding said spear in your throat.

This one is right under the GM's noses really, near the wall closest to them. No way for them to miss it. You don't look up to check.

The machines saw it, too.

The two left charge at you, but one of them gets stopped when they trigger the third and final tripwire trap you've set, spring made from a mousetrap this time. He gets clobbered when three massive metal balls roll off a rack and knock him out at the legs. It's not taken out, but it's down for a moment, and that's all you need have enough time to shoot your last hardpoint arrow from the quiver into the others faux eye socket. It shudders, starts to stumble, and you leap at it, push the arrow in further towards where brain matter would belong and then dig a dagger into its other eye with your left hand.

The thing falls backward as you do so, clatters against the floor loudly, but you don't even stop, continue forward until you're tucking and rolling, coming up on one knee. Out of arrows, you thwack the remaining machine with the bow on a backhand swing, swooping it forward to knock it off balance. One of its legs is barely hanging on, nearly crushed by one of the balls, and it goes down gracelessly. You make quick work of sticking your dagger in its temple.

The message, you hope, is clear. You have never been one for a show, but that has never meant you are not one for winning.

You'll hide if you need to, set traps if you need to, maybe even make allies if you need to, but you'll take them all. If they make it through your shadows, you'll take them head on in the light. And you'll do it without blinking.

You trigger the trap the machines missed without ceremony, take the bow and hurl it towards the land mine you built underneath the very station you used to make all of these traps. A flurry of nails explodes out from it, lodging into the walls and scattering across the floor like caltrops.

Let them miss nothing.

When you leave, it's without word or a bow. They will make their judgements no matter what you say.

"No one loves a try-hard."

And boy oh boy, was Parker Lochlan trying hard. It all came to her effortlessly, perfectly: annoyingly well-executed. By far, Parker's was among the best of the career showings, and he knew even as he was watching her that a hefty score was in store for her.

Cricket even began applauding there at the end. Hades didn't, even though he was also impressed with her clear prowess and the potential storylines he could use her for. Technically speaking, none of this had been approved by them and there was absolutely no reason that the training center should've been littered with traps without someone noticing.

Not to mention, he would've been much more impressed with her overall if she'd done more of it in the moment. Spend a week preparing in the arena, and the fight will surely have found and beaten you to death before you're ready to make your move.

"Though, I don't think love is what she's after here... No, I don't think she wants love at all."

Then what?

Fame? She lacked the likeableness. Blood? Perhaps, though there were much simpler ways to go about that if its what she was truly after.

Glory.

"She's in it for the sport."

Maryn first scribbled down a 1, and Hades arched an eyebrow in her direction before she scoffed.

"Actually, let's give the others a reason to kill her. 10."

That, combined with her +2 in the training assessments would've given her a perfect 12 as a final score. He considered whether her showing was deserving of that. The boy from Two had been far more... charismatic? Easy to root for? Maybe Maryn was right and this would get her killed, and Hades was not yet entirely sure he wanted that to happen, but he did like the storyline of calling someone perfect and seeing them either struggle to live up to the expectation or rise to the occasion as a certified badass.

He looked to Cricket, who agreed.

"Final score: 12. Let's see how she fares playing by our rules."

what are men to rocks and mountains?

a haunted house.

pearl mcclain d4 [ryan]
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last seen Nov 5, 2024 3:51:16 GMT -5

over the moon, where all the wild things are

☆ 90th pts's ☆ Feb 24, 2022 22:03:15 GMT -5

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Post by pearl mcclain d4 [ryan] on Feb 24, 2022 22:03:15 GMT -5

Second up. He expected this much at the least. The training center was exactly how he imagined it. Full of children who thought that they were going to make it home. Isaac always wondered when this time would come, that is, getting here. The capitol was a strange place full of monsters and mad men, and still, he is confused.

But according to Isaiah, he should have been ready for anything. The goodbye was still bittersweet, but the affirmation still rang in Isaac’s mind. He was expected to bring it all home, in order to prove that Isaiah’s teachings were the right way.

Anything to show up Ridley.

It was weird, having Ridley as a Mentor now. They spent a little more time together then they probably wanted too, but even Isaac knew that they both felt the same way about all of this. It might have been too soon. However, Isaac gave his reasoning, and Ridley could at least get behind it enough to try to offer whatever help she could. There was at least enough suspension of disbelief that he could very well walk out of this alive.

He just had to work for it.

Because even Isaac knew that no amount of knowledge could prepare him for what was going to happen here. Every arena was different, and people were always going to be inherently unpredictable.

That didn’t mean that he couldn’t try. After all, he was here to show that his fathers teachings could in fact, stand the scrutiny of the actual games.

His name was called, and he snapped up, realizing that this was in fact, very real.

He was ready.

He stood in front of the door, for a moment before pushing it open to reveal a very expansive room full of anything that a tribute could imagine. He had a feeling that Pope had probably already made his rounds in the room, but whatever the boy did, there was no sign of. Isaac had no clue what he had to live up too.

Isaac moved around the room and stopped at the weapons table in order to glide his hand over his choices. All of them, he was somewhat versed in. He looked up to see the Game Makers looking down at him waiting for him to start. ”Isaac Le Roux, District 1.” Isaac said calmly before picking up various throwing knives and butcher knives from the table.

His eyes had settled on the simulation room, and while he had a feeling that was going to see a lot of use as the training sessions had gone on, Isaac had a feeling that this was his chance to show what he had planned to do in the arena.

Isaiah had spent extensive weeks going over each Le Roux death in detail, sometimes stopping on the exact moment one of the deaths occurred. The 83rd was an exception, and instead Isaac was told to focus on what Ridley did in order to win the games. Once upon a time, Ridley was seen as the golden standard to overcome, but now with so many getting closer and closer, Isaiah realized there were the do’s and don’ts, so if Isaac was going to prove how his skill set was going to be useful in the arena, he was going to have to compile all his knowledge of what happened in roughly half an hour.

He stepped in front of the simulation computer and started to type in each Le Roux tribute that had been in the games. He had a specific order, he lined them up in. Varying them up was going to be key here. He had to put on a show, he knew that much. However, was he going to top any of his predecessors? That was going to be the test here.

He hit the start button.

He looked forward for a moment as the simulation took over, a dark sky had just set in, and a graveyard appeared at his feet. Isaac let his eyes adjust to the moonlight as he held a butchers knife at the ready. He hadn’t picked the setting, which might seem like a crutch, but he had a feeling that the extra challenge could only look good on him.

He stood at attention as he began to explore the area, his ears open as he looked around for whatever might come out of nowhere. That’s when he noticed a boot being flung out of nowhere. Isaac caught the sound of forcing wind and stepped back just enough to avoid it. He heard footsteps rushing towards him, and then Malachi Le Roux jumped out of the ether, his hands exposed and ready to find their place around Isaac’s neck. Isaac jumped back himself, realizing that the Le Roux legacy was as old as the games itself, so while it might be an obscure reference, it was important for him to be included here.

Isaiah never had footage of how this ancestor died, but Isaac always thought on his feet. The aggressiveness here made it apparent that desperation had taken over during his last couple of moments. Malachi was probably a more forceful fighter than anything else. Isaac smirked at Malachi but he did not stagger. Instead he tried to close the gap between both of them, his hands reaching for Isaac’s neck. Isaac ducked and thrusted upward, his knife cutting through simulated flesh that felt real still. Simulated blood had splashed onto Isaac’s face, but he used the momentum from Malachi to lift his foot to the others chest and kick him off the knife.

Malachi was known for his stubbornness, or at least, that was what Isaac was told as they briefly covered the earliest games. He had so much fight in him, but that might have been the downfall of him. Too brave, too lion hearted. Just like this whole family.

Malachi staggard forward, screaming at Isaac, but the movement became predictable enough again for Isaac to lead with his knife, this time Malachi falling into his chest and the knife burrowing deep through the skin. Isaac realized that this man was in fact, the reason why he was here, and while he was grateful, that did not change anything. Isaiah would tell him to show now mercy.

He watched as Malachi had disappeared through his fingertips.

The scenery changed, a dimly lit night sky had changed into a well-lit sunset on an ocean front. Isaac had been a little thrown off, his eyes slightly overwhelmed by all the sensory and visual changes. He blinked for a couple minutes before realizing that there was no time for waiting. He heard footsteps in the distance, sand being crunched on. His eyes flew open to realize that Emerson Le Roux was already hot on his trail. She had proven to be a force of reckoning as she jumped up and kicked Isaac down to the ground. Emerson had been set up to shine bright during her games.

Isaac took a second to catch his breath before hearing wind crack behind him. He rolled over in the sand to see a knife flying not too far from his face. Isaac looked up to see that Emerson was not alone. In fact, he didn’t have time react as he had to roll over again, this time avoiding Emerson’s foot. He tossed some sand up in the air in the direction of Emerson, hearing the simulation gasp as Isaac had gotten to his feet. Another knife had flown through the air, but Isaac had performed a backflip and heard the thud of the knife in the sand a couple feet in front of him.

Emmett Le Roux had finally come into focus, and Isaac felt like this had to be irony. Even in simulations, the twins had to be reunited. Isaac had little time to dwell, because both of these Le Rouxs were trained just as much as he would. However, Eurydice had been far more aggressive then Isaiah would have ever been. Isaac cracked his knuckles before letting his hand fall to a knife tucked away in the belt. He watched as the twins had readied their own weapons, Emerson materialized a sword, and Emmett still confident with his throwing knives.

Isaac wondered if they could smell trepidation.

Isaac didn’t wait for them to make the move, his hand quickly spamming a knife into the air, Isaac stepped towards the left, his feet meeting the water as it splashed in the air. He watched as the knife had whizzed past the twins, but it threw them off enough for Isaac to get close enough to throw another knife at Emmett. His eyes had to divide between both of them, and while Emerson had moved forward, Emmett had moved to the side in order to dodge the second one. Isaac kept moving as another knife had flown from his hand. Emerson was hot on his trail, but Isaac had calculated the right amount of footsteps in order to keep up the pace. Each time Emmett had dodged, another knife was thrown before Isaac was finally arms distance from him. Isaac grabbed his butchers knife, realizing that it was free from Malachi’s blood previously stained on. He knew that the twins had a connection, and so the best way to use that to his advantage was catch them off guard.

Isaac pulled Emmett by his shirt and twisted around him, the butcher knife in hand, raising it to the boys neck as he watched Emerson stop in her tracks. The sword was pointed forward, and Isaac was keeping his face in her line of sight just enough to show her just how serious he was. Emmett on the other hand was slightly fidgeting in Isaac’s grip, trying to escape his clutches. Emmett didn’t realize that Isaac was already picking up on what he was doing, after all, Isaac studied each of their games.

Isaac wasted no time, his knife had sliced through Emmetts neck as soon as Emerson had stepped forward. Throwing the body of what once was Emmett Le Roux right into Emerson’s blade. Isaac had created enough distance between both of them, another throwing knife in one hand and the butchers knife in the other. He kept his eyes on Emerson as she pushed Emmett off of her blade. The guttural yell following suit, as Emerson had stormed through the water. Isaac had thrown a knife but Emerson swatted it with her sword, deflecting it into the fake slaty air.

A swing cut through the air, but Isaac had brought up his knife quick enough to push Emerson back. Isaac used the inertia to create a little more space between them, but Emerson was relentless. These simulations were realistic. The emotion was clear on her face. She wanted blood.

Isaac had thrown sand up again in the air, giving him enough time to sidestep Emerson’s sword swipe downwards. His hand gripped his knife as he finally found his opportunity, the knife finding its home in her right eye. He felt her body go lifeless on the hilt, and he pulled up and stepped back. The carnage was enough to make anyone feel unsettled, but just like Malachi, the twins had started to evaporate into history, and the next simulation was about to load in.

The sunlight was bright as Isaac could hear birds in the distance. The chirping had been enough distract him for a moment, but that did not stop Silk Le Roux from trying to take him out. Another formidable titan stood in his way. The grassy plain gave no chance for Isaac to take cover. He had to prepare on the fly. His knife was firm in his hand as he jumped away from Silk. It was like yesterday they were training together at the academy.

Isaac had stepped forward and thrown another knife in the direction of Silk, a thud had been heard, Isaac taking a second to realize that it had found a home in her arm. That did not stop Silk from charging forward. Isaac remember that it took a lot to take her down, almost three tributes to be exact. However, Isaac knew that he had the endurance to do it. It was all about timing at the end of the story. He ran forward and threw another knife, this time Silk dodging it but giving Isaac an opening to slice at her with the butchers knife. The feeling of skin opening up beneath the knife was not something that Isaac was a fan of, but that did not matter in here. Silk would still try to kill him.

She pushed him on the ground standing over him with her spear at the ready. The videos that Isaac watched back in one had shown that Silk was well versed with the spear, but Isaac was able to recall how she moved with it. She had stabbed down a couple times, Isaac contorting his body enough for each time to hit the grass under him. Isaac had wriggled high enough to take his foot and push her off him. That was his chance if anything. The knife had come down on her stomach, Isaac pushing deep but Silk still had enough fight in her. The spear had found a home in Isaac’s chest, the pain flaring. Isaac wanted to cry out, but he knew that this would past. Silk Le Roux was one stubborn girl, and even to this day, Isaac was shocked that she did not come home. However, that was her weakness. She let the confidence cloud the realization that she couldn’t gloat in this moment.

His knife came down again on her chest, and he looked her in the eye, and she gave him a gentle smile before disappearing into the sky.

The terrain changed, a little more unbearable as Isaac realized that anything he had been feeling had disappeared. Each change had been a fresh start, but that meant he did wonder how much longer this was going to be. He hoped he was giving at least enough of show to keep the Gamemakers on the edge of their seats.

Isaac stood at the top of a mountain as he looked straight at Julian Le Roux. Another strong contender for the crown as he wasted no time brandishing his own spear. Isaac knew a lot about Julian, but not enough to actually claim that he was friendly with him. All the Le Rouxs studied together after all.

However, Julian was always deemed the most emotional out of the Le Roux tributes. While that could give him an advantage in some aspects, Isaac wasn’t so certain. Isaiah had always told him that having emotion would get him in trouble. Isaac had always taken his fathers teachings with a grain of salt. After all, none of it was proven. Not until now. He did study Julian’s games just like all the others, and seeing him right now meant little. Julian was just going to be another example of how Isaac was going to deal with another obstacle in his way.

Julian had stepped quickly through the rocky terrain, his spear lunging forward trying to rip through Isaac’s skin. Isaac stepped back enough to lean out of the way, a cut or two only landing on his forearms. Isaac might have been overthinking this one a little too much. The amount of stabs that Julian sent forward had seemed a little too rhythmic. He counted them as he kept creating distance between both of them. When Isaac found a break in the pattern he stepped forward and slashed his knife up Julian’s chest.

Julian staggered back, but Isaac knew not to stop, a knife had flown from his hand and straight into eye of Julian Le Roux.

Another monster vanquished.

The simulation had morphed back to the graveyard setting that Isaac had experienced before with Malachi. Isaac took a deep breath as he figured that the simulation was about to end. Isaac faced the game makers for a moment before noticing that this setting was just a little different. He noticed gravestones in succession, belonging to each Le Roux that he had taken out in this simulation.

He turned around to see nothing behind him, just the moon glowing above. However, moments later, Ridley Le Roux had swung her scythe from what seemed like darkness.

He almost forgot that he had included her in this as well.

It made sense for the simulation to put her last after all. She had survived the games after all. It was sort of poetic and haunting at the same time. The scenery, the setting, all of it seemed a little too loaded even for Isaac, but that did not matter right now. Isaac knew that this was his final test. Overcome Ridley, and he was prepared for anything.

Isaac had locked eyes with the Lioness for a moment, but in that moment, Ridley had already jumped through the air and brought her scythe down towards him. The negative to her weapon was that it was heavier to hold, which meant it would be easier for Isaac to dodge. He stepped to the side and heard the scythe cleave into the ground. Ridley did not stop there though, her reflexes quick enough to sweep her leg under Isaacs, kicking him off balance onto the ground. It gave her enough time to lift her scythe out and stab it down at him.

Isaac realized that Ridley really did have everything to prove in the arena, and so would Isaac. There was no easy route, and there was no way to win the games. Isaac rolled back as Ridley had continued to step forward, trying to apply as much pressure as she could in make Isaac lose his footing.

Isaac thought about Ridley’s time in the games, and how attached Ridley had gotten to the people that she spent time with in her arena. That’s when he finally realized what exactly Ridley’s weakness could be.

Just how much she cared.

Isaac had kicked back enough, his hands pushing on the ground as he sprang out of the hitting range of Ridley’s scythe. She swung it down, but as Isaac watched it plunge into the ground, he stood up and put his foot down on it, digging it deeper into the ground. Ridley grunted, and Isaac had taken his butchers knife and swiped at her face. The scream sounded so real, and so did the blood. Ridley had pushed Isaac off the scythe and lifted it out of the ground. He jumped backward as she wildly swiped it in the air.

His back had collided with another tombstone, a larger one that Isaac didn’t anticipate. He took a deep breath as he could feel Ridley’s gaze on him. She swung her scythe as he slumped down, his butt hitting the ground. He looked up to see Ridley pause for a second, fear struck. He realized that this was his opportunity, so he picked up his knife and plunged the blade into her neck. Ridley closed her eyes and fell backwards, Isaac standing to his feet. He turned around to see that the gravestone read Milo “Tool” Miloslavsky.

The scythe had evaporated along with the setting and Ridley. Done in by the amount of care she held in her.

Finally, he was back in the room, sweating a little more than he would have liked, but after a few deep breathes, he looked up at the game makers. ”Ive studied my whole life to be here.” he placed the blades back on the table. ”My families failures will be my greatest asset in the arena. ” Isaac had started making his way to the door. ”Im ready.” he said before walking out of the room.

He was.

He'd been thrilled at the prospect of another Le Roux in his arena. Ridley won during his second attempt at junioring, back in the 83rd, and the family had several other showings in the years following. No other winners yet, though.

He recalled the boy's reaping footage, recalled blood betraying blood in the name of self-preservation, and thought to himself, Isaac Le Roux has much to improve. The assessment was fine. A bit melodramatic and long-winded, sure, but what could he have expected from a career tribute. More memorable than the Vanburen counterpart, and seemingly much more galvanized and focused.

Cricket seemed on the fence still, though did mention enjoying the flip before she scribbled down a 7. Maryn seemed to follow her lead with a 7 of her own: "Maybe it's... performance anxiety?"

Hades considered this for a moment. His performance wasn't particularly nuanced, but demonstrated clear skill. Perhaps not ones that were being fully utilized just yet, but clear skill regardless.

"Or maybe he's saving his full potential for the arena. 8."

They both thought this over for a short time, and when there was no immediate objection, he submitted the official score: 8.

Last Edit: Feb 24, 2022 22:05:28 GMT -5 by pearl mcclain d4 [ryan]

d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel
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last seen Nov 5, 2024 3:49:38 GMT -5

call me jaded

☆ 90th pts's ☆ Feb 25, 2022 14:49:42 GMT -5

Quote

Post by d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel on Feb 25, 2022 14:49:42 GMT -5

”Here is something I made earlier.” I tell the gamemakers as soon I step into the demonstration room. It has only had one test run, but I am sure that will be enough, time has been limited and my procrastination has really taken me to the line. I should be awarded points for how quickly I was able to throw all the odds and ends together. The contraption makes a clunk noise as I drop it into the centre of the room.

Time has been wasted building it, I should have been sieving through the information, not taking apart lamps and anything electrical that I could salvage around the accommodation and training centre. But Atticus keeps going on about how important the scoring is and how essential it is for my survival because any capitolite that fancies me will dip their hands in their pockets and throw a few scraps into the arena.

”It is called Bellamy.” I introduce the little menacing machine before seeking out the extra apparatus to test it out with. A few knives will do and to the relief of an avox or a standby trainer, I drag one of the light dummies into a position in the firing line of the machine. ”So, it can throw knives.”

I slot one of the knives into the makeshift holder, crafted using one of many plastic cups that I have seized from the cafeteria. Then I hit the button, biting my bottom lip as I wait for the success or failure of the second test run.

Easy! Not quite the bullseye I had hoped but the knife lands in the kneecap of the dummy.

”I made this using items around the training centre, dining hall, accommodation and following a few sweet talks with those I will not name.

The switch button is from a lamp in my bedroom, I used all the wiring from it too. The metal base is one of the first aid kit tins and cups from the dining hall hold the knives. And the reason for the rotating toaster machine not working in the dining hall? Yeah, I took the rotary gears and electrics from that, though I am sure someone watched me do it…You better check your surveillance cameras on that. The arm that that catapults the knives is a handle from the elevator and the box that the cups are sat is a box that once stored flints.

It took me half a night to build all of this in my bedroom. Quite simple mechanics really, a bit basic. Not sure why I used the cups, I guess they hold knives well. “

I can get out of here now, or maybe a third display will be a bit better? I pull out a cigarette from the cuff of my sleeve, lighting it with the lighter that is stuffed down my bra. ”I can smoke and it can throw knives…really fast.” I take one drag of the cigarette before dropping five knives into five cups on the machine, pulling the rigid elevator handle/knife throwing arm back down into its starting position. The switch is hit for the third test run and the knives fling at the dummy. Three hits, one in the shoulder, one in the left thigh and one in the groin area. I guess it was better than five misses. The loose knives just clatter against the floor.

”It is a bit rigid, but it works. Everything is either glued, bolted or melted together. There are a lot of tools hanging around the training centre. I will leave it here so you can inspect it, and fix that toaster!”

A trail of cigarette smoke follows me out of the room. At least that is done, now back to what really matters.

Kiah.

"Ah. She's the crafty type."

Her voice is a dagger made out of ice cold steel.

She stares at the strange machine that Sierra leaves behind, Bethany or some other childish name of that sort — and she feels a knot of rage tightening inside of her chest, oddly offended at seeing Capitol belongings used in such an... indelicate way. It's crude craftmanship, albeit functional. "A little thief, too." Though her co-gamemakers agree that this is only a situational talent, a skill that could turn the tide of her last few days alive only if all of the factors line up, they also draw attention to the lack of finesse.

There are no roses to throw — only thorns biting into the palms of her hands.

The girl has an intriguing personality, a troublemaker if Maryn's ever seen one, but this only serves to make her lips twist into a sour frown. It's disrespectful, every aspect of this showing, but she cannot deny that Sierra has given them something to work with. She writes down an 8 alongside Cricket, glancing over to notice the seven on Hades' clipboard. "I'll say this much, she's in need of a wake up call." If ever there was a time to take things seriously for the tribute from Three, it would be now. Maryn sneers at the thought of killing someone that doesn't have the good grace to fight back.

Where's the fun in that?

"But no matter. She'll get one soon enough." She lifts her gaze to catch Hades looking particularly less stoic than usual, suggesting that Sierra's lighter be confiscated before she's allowed to return to the third floor. This brings a smile back to Maryn's playful expression, all too familiar with the struggle between mankind and their vices. "What's the matter, Lochlan? Our arena will do her in long before the nicotine rots her lungs."

She scoff-laughs for good measure.

maverick hale 🌧️ d5 [nyte]
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oof

☆ 90th pts's ☆ Feb 25, 2022 15:18:40 GMT -5

Quote

Post by maverick hale 🌧️ d5 [nyte] on Feb 25, 2022 15:18:40 GMT -5

r o m a n w e s t b r o o k

Look, Wes isn't an impressive guy. At least, not in the way the gamemakers expect him to be. Gazes are greedy and sharp in these halls - they flay his skin from his bones and worse yet they always turn away disappointed. They have a way of making him feel utterly violated and completely worthless at the same time. Something tells Wes all those hours he spent training in the dingy community gym hadn't shot him to the top of the pack.

Somehow, he's got to convince them worth keeping around in spite of that. It's no secret coming from the upper districts earns some degree of charitability from the higher ups. It felt... nice to have the odds in his favor for once. All that was left was to stick to what he knew: something flashy, mildly impressive and completely fucking reckless.

"I've rigged one of these to explode." He gestures at the six jack-in-the-boxes he'd had a trainer shuffle as he made a show of turning his back and singing an off-tune rendition of twinkle, twinkle little star. It's not as impressive as it sounds. Wes is no mechanic, he just hails from the ugly places he can almost guarantee have never crossed the Gamemaker's minds. All trashcan fires and blackened fingertips - alleyways full of frostbite and liver failure.

They make stuff more potent than this to sell in little baggies. It pays well to know your way around dangerous chemicals in the underbelly of District Two.

First, an oxidizing agent - given how much of a bang explosions have made in the past few games it was easy enough to get his hands on a firework and empty its contents into one toybox. Then powdered sugar - an excellent source of energy for firebombs and mad scientists alike. Finally a small vial of sulfuric acid, with glass fragile enough to be shattered by - for the sake of example - a tightly coiled spring in a children's toy.

That's all he'd bothered to set up for his gamemakers, this next part is entirely for Wes."Gerry here has done an excellent job at ensuring I've got no fucking clue which one that is." He turns to Gerry with a flourish, shooting the exhausted looking woman a thumbs up and an exaggerated wink. "Naturally, I'm gonna open one."

"Am I feeling lucky?" He makes a show of choosing the second box, serenading his audience with equally off tune lyrics to pop goes the weasel as he turns the toy's lever. It's kind of funny, the only time he ever feels completely calm is the moment before the blast. The crescendo of that final note, a nursery rhyme which has somehow become the sole herald of life and death.

He's having fun. More fun than he's ever had.

Then the clown (which bears a striking resemblance to the victor of the 84th games) pops out of the box and nothing happens. "Guess I am."

Next, Gerry's supposed to remotely trigger the boxes until she finds the trap. It was the safe play - Wes shows off one of his skills and has a chance at an easy adrenaline high. And no one else has to risk getting hurt 'cause Wes isn't interested in making minimum wage any shittier than it already is.

Four boxes, the song plays and that stupid fucking clown pops out.

There's spiders under his skin, his palms itch.

Three boxes.

Higher stakes.

"Wait." Gerry's about to pull the next string but stops at the sound of his voice. Her eyes flash - expression twisting in a way that Wes hopes doesn't make it obvious he's gone off script. "I'll have one more go."

The song rings louder in his ears this time, faster because he's let himself become impatient. It's tinny and shrill and taunting. Begging for this to be the mistake it probably is. Wes doesn't hesitate, if anything his movements get steadier until the song stops and nothing happens again and Gerry is aggressively ushering him away from the remaining two toys.

"I don't like to make things easy for anyone," He grins up at the Gamemakers as an explosion finally sounds from somewhere behind him. A grand miasma of bright magenta heat - burning potassium staining the bomb's flame its unusual hue. "But I do make them fun."

He forgets to bow before he leaves.

xx - dice roll thread

you and me live like birds on a power line
hands slipping and our fingers fried

It isn't District loyalty that charms Cricket towards Roman Westbrook. Oh, no. The history between her and the tributes from her home is long and often fraught with contempt. It's no secret that Cricket dislikes brute force careers on a level so deeply personal that it's rare for the root to show; she has never bothered to endear herself to others with vulnerability, only to impress them with undeniable competence, and so a childhood of bullies with beefy fists and unimaginative mouths has never been a topic she leads with. And yet... in the privacy of the Gamemaker's booth, with paper and pen in hand, she never bothers pretending to feel anything less than loathing for a traditionally endless parade of careers that are all brawn and no creative bravery.

Countless people have gone so far as to use her anti-career prejudice to accuse her of being a terrible mentor and the reason for District Two's frequent failings, to which she brazenly counters: The problem isn't her; it's them. They're terminally basic.

This year feels different from the others. This is a new generation and she's quick to adore them for it, all smiles and delighted giggles as the stunning performer that is Charlotte Bellisario exits triumphantly and her equally unexpected counterpart enters. An unpaid debt may have brought him here, but the itch to prove his worth is bigger than that. It's that subconscious twitch underlying his every movement that captures Cricket's attention, the subtle burning fuse of someone who's tired of other people's bullshit coming after him. He has his own thing going on. His own problems. He didn't come here to be a punching bag for other people's insecurities.

Whether or not the other tributes have realized it yet, if they're looking for someone to punch down on, it's not Wes.

There is no bloodred ballgown, but there is something more: "I've rigged one of these to explode." Even the tiger moves towards the glass for a closer look, peering down at a neatly shuffled row of jack-in-the-boxes. An off-kilter children's tune haunts the air and, for the first time in her career as a Gamemaker, Cricket truly feels the biased tug of home on her heart. Not for District Two. No. Just a particular corner of it. Vibrant and riotous in the dark of night.

She closes her eyes for a fleeting moment and the striped canvas of the big top unfurls all around. "Ladies and gentlemen..." The whisper is softer than the hum of the electrical system or Hades' breathing. Softer than the sound of the Ringmaster's voice in her head: — don't blink! Don't move. Don't breathe for fear of missing a moment of the dazzling array of feats in store for you tonight. You have come to be amazed —

And Roman Westbrook is here to entertain.

He has roots in dark places the same way she does, the same way everyone she has ever given a damn about in this world does. The willingness to put yourself in danger usually requires having survived danger before. If you do it once then you can do it again and to be this casually reckless indicates a habit, a way of life. The family of Cirque de la Mort sleeps on nails, breathes fire, dances in swarms of bees, leaps blindly into empty and bottomless air... and this is a show like one of theirs. Cricket doesn't just want to watch what this boy can do, she wants to know him — who he is, what he's been through, and whether or not he's in need of a friendly striped roof over his head.

  Other tributes put the lives of dummies and holograms on the line. The boy from Two wagers his own. The box rigged to explode doesn't care whether or not he makes it into the arena and it won't flinch for fear of crossing lines of life and death.

"Gerry here has done an excellent job at ensuring I've got no fucking clue which one that is." Slipping out of her chair, Cricket sits on the floor with Arbor, as if the two of them are discussing this crude use of chemicals in their own secret language of Wild Things. The overgrown lapcat rumbles his approval. It smells like old pranks and a familiar promise of wickedly merry laughter to come. Comforting. "Naturally, I'm gonna open one." Naturally. "Am I feeling lucky?"

  "The one on the left!" Cricket heckles joyfully, sticking her tongue out at Maryn when her co-Gamemaker frowns at the juvenile outburst. What? Don't like this storyline, Hale? Her cackle sounds like fresh-cut gravel tossing itself in a hail of fuck you confetti throughout the room, landing with little plonks in champagne flutes and ricocheting across golden platters of sugared figs. Wes doesn't pick the box on the left, but his choice is by no means disappointing because he still reaches without hesitation. He still wagers his well-being on the stupidest, most delightful shenanigan Cricket has witnessed since leaving home for arena preparations, turning the handle round and round. POP goes the weasel! A dopey little Jack jumps out of the box, harmless, and she cheers. "Ooo, what do you think, Hades? Place your bet now. Who's gonna lose their head first — him?" Stretching back, as if luxuriating, she playfully swats at one of Maryn's designer pumps. The finger-squishing snap of her heel to attention is almost fast enough to catch Cricket, only a fraction of a second too slow. "Or her?"

  Pulling herself back up, Cricket presses her face to the glass like a greedy child staring down a toy store. Taptaptap. That one is hers. She had forgotten what it's like to feel pride for another person and it doesn't matter that she has no right to put that kind of mental hook into him, no right to claim a stranger. But he's clearly having fun. His odds of success are dwindling with every box and yet his smile only grows in tandem with the ever-escalating tension. Will he die? How big will the explosion be? Is it in this box or that box? Will someone rush over to stop him? He has tricked them all into rooting for him. Even Hades can't hide the upward twisting of his lips, no matter how many times he mutters idiot under his breath.

They hang on his every flourish, despite the grit beneath Wes's fingernails.

Is he feeling lucky?

"Guess I am."

But luck doesn't matter. It isn't luck that motivates him to reach for the next box, with three boxes down and three to go. It's the itch again, the one that Cricket saw trying to jump out from beneath his skin the moment this kid walked into the room. The higher the stakes rise, the greedier he gets for them. They aren't watching a simple showman. This is next level, this is greatness in an unexpected place, the kind of magic that can only be found when no one is looking for it. It finds you. Simple and undeniable.

"Wait." Breaths catch. The trainer is about to seize the remaining boxes like law enforcement confiscating party contraband, ruining a perfectly good time. Wes can't stop now. His palms must be burning, the hair on his arms standing on end. He's addicted. The rush is everything. Cricket knows. She knows, she knows, she knows. "I'll have one more go."

Cricket would have flung herself off the balcony if he stopped now.

Screeching with untamed excitement before elbowing Hades in the leg, she gestures with emphatic disbelief because the boy from Two already has his hands on the next crank, turning it with nothing short of impatience. This may be the Hunger Games, but he's absolutely starving, glutting himself on adrenaline. The trainer is ready to fight now, making a mad grab for the two remaining boxes as Wes's fingers dance too close to a grand finale.

"I don't like to make things easy for anyone —" He grins ferociously and Cricket grins back, a small explosion in the background crowning him with smoke and magenta fire. "— but I do make them fun."

Maybe she's going soft. It feels dangerous. It feels like running her fingers across the lid of a closed box and guessing whether or not it's rigged to explode. A children's nursery song dances through Cricket's head as she watches Wes leave the room.

A clipboard is tossed down into her lap and and she blows a thank you kiss to Hades before rummaging through the papers like a madwoman. Maybe if she looks hard enough she'll find adoption papers hiding between the evaluation forms. Tracing a finger down the list of tributes, she locates the name Roman Westbrook and laughs to herself, utterly giddy, before (impatiently, with itchy palms) writing down a perfect twelve. She never thought she'd see the day.

  Hades and Maryn don't quite agree, but they come close. Cricket rolls her eyes. It's like she always insists: The problem isn't her; it's them.

cave me in gallant, tablo, eric nam

[ooc note: lalia's response here is a work of art in of itself and i'm still in awe - thanks to her and the gms for all the effort they're putting in for us because it's appreciated AND makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.]

Last Edit: Feb 25, 2022 15:19:39 GMT -5 by maverick hale 🌧️ d5 [nyte]

the m o o n controls the t i d e, it could cause you to d r o w n

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☆ 90th pts's ☆ Feb 25, 2022 19:19:23 GMT -5

Quote

Post by Python on Feb 25, 2022 19:19:23 GMT -5

m a z e .

Capitol etiquette was confusing. Was Maze expected to make eye contact with the Gamemakers as she entered the achingly-silent room, or would that be considered disrespectful?

She was reminded of her own family and how they demanded she look them in the face, but if her gaze locked with theirs she was accused of challenging authority. What was a girl to do but run away and never look back?

Little did she know, she would end up running into a different nightmare.

She stood in front of the trainer and zipped her training suit up to the neckline. She had requested his participation in the training session, and he had a vague idea of what she wanted him to do.

A nod of her head signaled the beginning. The trainer picked up a set of knives and aimed the first one toward her.

Maze didn't know the ins and outs of combat, but she knew how to read the intention in somebody's eyes. In the streets of Twelve, living among the desperate, she learned how to determine when and if she was being pickpocketed. Even worse, she had to learn who was a mugger and who wasn't. It was in the eyes, the body language, the hands reaching out of view.

In this case, it was the eyes.

She curved her shoulder to the side as the first dagger sailed past her. A small kiss of metal near her sleeve, and that was all. She watched him grab a second dagger, and his eyes never left her face. Shit.

She craned her neck quickly, nearly stepping to the side as the dagger threatened to snatch the ends of her hair. Then she watched his eyes focus, flicker down to her hips for just a moment -

She leapt to the side this time, his third dagger flying past her legs. Two more in succession, and she danced like an awkward string puppet. Fortunately, the second one only managed to cut a hole in the fabric of her pants.

She paused. "One left. You can throw it, or you can come at me. Your choice."

She hoped he would choose option B, or this would be a boring show.

When his body language changed, she turned and sprinted away. She slid beneath a rack of weapons, forcing him to run around because his torso was too wide, and headed for the 'forest ecosystem' area of the room. She had a trap preset for him, and ran across the soil to the destination she had mapped out.

She spotted the mound of dirt soon enough. It was next to a tree, and she easily avoided it by hopping over it. After she landed on the ground, she paused and watched him over her shoulder at the last moment as he -

stepped to the side and also avoided it. His dagger was at the ready. She was in range now, and he had clearly noticed the dirt mound.

The ground beneath him caved in as he stepped into the real trap hidden beneath a crooked pinecone. He ankle was caught, he stumbled forward, and his last dagger sailed into the air.

She quickly grabbed it, squeezed it in her hand, and ran to him.

She thrust a closed fist into his back. He shouted.

"You're dead."

She opened her empty hand. The knife was in her pocket, a quick little 'sleight of hand' she hoped the Gamemakers hadn't seen. The poor trainer clearly hadn't; his eyes were wide, face slightly paled.

"What? I wouldn't actually do that. I'm not cruel."

She righted herself and approached the dirt mound.

"Also, this is just dirt." She kicked it aside to prove her point. Just a mound of soil playing the part of an 'obvious' trap. He couldn't step to the left because there was a tree in his way, and she had stood directly in front of it, making it less likely he would attempt to leap over it.

She was a good liar, always had been. Trickery kept her money safe and her throat unslashed.

"Thanks for playing."

----------

In the simplest of terms, it'd been a long day for Hades Lochlan. On one hand, he was enjoying his first real looks at the tributes, thinking up storylines and crossovers and confrontations he wanted to persuade in the arena. On the other hand, he'd been paying attention to unruly teenagers who- chronically- seemed to think that they were the exception. His ears were ringing from the several explosions, (if he found out someone was leaking arena information, he was taking tongues,) and since he was being honest, some of these tributes bored the complete shit out of him.

"If she's as bad as her district partner, I say we kill them both off Day Two nice and neat- no need in risking a victor if that's all they have to offer this year." Last year had been a close call, but at least the guy was good television.

Hades narrowed his eyes at the girl, honestly hoping for her to make this quick. When he saw her deciding to pick a fight, he assumed it would be over quick. She was small and untrained and- he glanced down at her chart.

"19 in blades," he said it aloud so the other gamemakers would know what to expect, "43 in hand-to-hand." She had brilliant scores in smuggling, stealth, camouflage she'd even received the only perfect score of the year, this one for thievery. Impressive, but hardly showcased in a traditional 1v1, surely.

But then the fight started, and she stood there like an invitation, and the trainer sent the knives, and Maze Armstrong did something important: she surprised him. It wasn't very technical, but it worked. She dodged blade after blade, running in the opposite direction when the cue came. And oh, by the way, she was fast. Impressively fast. He wondered if she was as known for her speed back home as she would be for the rest of the world.

And the trap- the placement was brilliant. The redirect was well-placed and, actually, her own position was clever as well. She was making decisions for the trainer, and the trainer didn't realize it for a second. He fell right into her play.

And as a result, the fight was over, and the day belonged to Maze.

When she was gone, Hades found himself struggling to suppress a smile. She wasn't playing up any station. She was playing up herself. Hades liked that.

"I believe plays like that are how winners are made." He was annoyed at her district placement, and it was still much too early for him to pick any favorites, but if District Twelve had a chance in hell as of right now, Maze Armstrong was that chance.

"Let's reward her efforts. 8."

Cricket and Maryn both nodded in agreement. That, with the +1 for a non-combat station, brought Maze's total to a 9.

pogue
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Is she trying to interrupt our henna session?

☆ 90th pts's ☆ Feb 25, 2022 22:02:56 GMT -5

Quote

Post by pogue on Feb 25, 2022 22:02:56 GMT -5

Bowie's PTS is an interactive prototype of behind-the-scenes experiences and memories, and how they culminated in the performer that is WHIPLASH. Though the "footage" flows from left to right in order of how his PTS went down, y'all're free to read the scenes in any order you like. Click the link below to view it!

P.S. If the navigational arrows are cut off, press Z to fit the experience to your screen!

C L I C K

This is the curse of all great cinema.

It's never appreciated in its time.

"Are you kidding me, Cricket? A seven?" Maryn glares at her co-gamemaker like she's responsible for every wrongdoing that has ever been done against her. Her fists tighten at her sides, fingers squeezing around her pen. She glances down at the neat nine scrawled across her clipboard, moving her gaze a little further to see the same number on Hades' entry. "You can't deny the kid had heart. I could see everything he was going for."

Surveying the space, she hones in on the remnants of the scene he set out for them, extending her hand to gesture at the grand chaos of it all. "I'll be the first to admit that the last thing I want in a Games of mine is a Ten with a double digit score — but he gave us a show. Most of the others are their own brand of barbiturate. You could almost root for him." She imagines a finale starring him in the leading role, then she wonders how she'd truly feel seeing him stand in the place of a tribute from a more deserving district. Grimacing, she scratches out her nine and yields for a respectable 8. "We can agree to disagree."

He reminds her of a trained actor. Whether or not it's a good thing remains to be seen, but he has her attention. Pretty picture playing on a loop, torture immortalized in film. That's all this has ever been. Hawk circling rabbit, snake choking mouse, gamemaker killing tribute.

This is the circle of life in Panem.

He's perfect for the tragedy she's scripting.

Last Edit: Feb 25, 2022 22:03:27 GMT -5 by pogue

napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.
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☆ 90th pts's ☆ Mar 2, 2022 22:28:30 GMT -5

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Post by napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ. on Mar 2, 2022 22:28:30 GMT -5

but I'm gonna win, i'm gonna try
i'll never lose, i'll never die
you've seen me before, you'll see me again
i'll never give up, i'll never give in

Despite what most assumed, snakes weren’t hostile creatures.

As supple and smart as the whip they resembled, they had stunned humans for ages with their bold intellect and sly playfulness. A snake only bared fangs when provoked, meaning if left alone, it may perhaps leave you alone.

Perhaps.

The first time he felt a snake’s fangs was his own choice. He asked for it. A Salazar, a serpent, it was only true that their venom should flow through his veins. That the poison should live in his bones. It was a part of him, and he a part of it.

And it hurt. He was certain he screamed in agony as the fangs sank beneath flesh, injecting their dark-green fire. His skin burned. His muscles cooked. He'd never forget how it necrotized his flesh, causing it to bloom all angry-black around the bite. However, biting down on the inside of his cheek so hard it bled, Rafael let it happen. Let it burn.

On that day, he became a true Salazar in a way: he braved the poison and survived, eventually becoming it himself.

His shoes, polished of course, clicked-clacked as he walked in. He was a vision in green, his suit made of a material that flickered like trees dappled by summerlight, a forest prince conjured from a fairy tale. His brown eyes, on the other hand, shone with fey mischief, concealing their secrets.

With all the poise of his aristocratic upbringing, Rafael dipped his head in a formal bow before the gamemakers and opened his arms theatrically. Welcome to my show, it said but betrayed no more. He wanted their mystique, wanted their curiosity. Keep them guessing. If they had scarce clue to who truly he was, to what he craved, they had no way of knowing what he planned to do next. And he needed them to not know, lest it ruined any surprises.

Secrets were best served raw, or à la tartare at least.

He straightened up and smiled after his introduction. “The pleasure’s all mine, Mr. Lochlan,” his eyes slithered towards the gaunt man, “Ms. Hale,” and then the woman, beautiful in a way a cold diamond was, “and of course,” he can’t erase the wonder from his tone when he drawled: “Ms. Antoinette.” His mother instilled in him the importance of greeting people by their first names. Courtesy. That, and it made them see you as a friend.

Rafael wasted no more time. He snapped his fingers, and the sound of metal against tile rang through the hall as his trainer dragged something out of a chamber.

The silver cage gleamed under the fluorescents. Even at first glance, it was obvious to see that it was not made to hold anything within, but rather for viewing pleasure, crafted out of intricate gold filigree and keeping inside a creature that rattled its tail when it saw him.
They called it a snakeroot, a genetic marvel between serpent and ivy. The creature’s hide was a deepest forest green, flickering the way Rafael’s suit did, and now it was obvious that he wore its skin. Those slits of amber eyes regarded him as he did it. Rafael waved a hand at his trainer, and … the cage creaked open.

It crawled out slowly, almost languorously, complete with the unerring grace of a such creature. The scales murmured against the tiles, its tail sang a gentle rattle, and as it inched closer to him, Rafael began peeling away his own clothes, the snake-skin suit first, then his tie, then the cotton undershirt, all until his torso was revealed and the serpent was towering before him. It unfurled its full height. He took out his dagger from its sheath, the blade a beautifully-crafted silver. The snake leveled its eyes level with his own, and so they stared at each other, unblinkingly then, daring one another to make the first move. To lash out. To attack. To bite.

Silence. The tension of a thundercloud.

And then a hiss, the sudden sound of a springboard coming alive, as the snake’s head arrowed forth and his dagger hand moved, all in perfect, rehearsed synchronicity for its fangs to prick his wrist and for his blade to puncture through its skin. The fangs took hold, the blade dug deeper. He felt it the instant the poison spread: green magma through his veins, spiderwebbing out from where the fangs had sunk, but Rafael was not screaming this time.

Instead, he smirked. Clenched his hand to a fist. His breath escaped him in a slow, steady exhale as the potent venom raced through his veins. The hurt had become a thing of the past. The venom had become nothing but a part of his blood. They said it took a person years of administrating non-lethal dosages to become immune to poison, but research hadn’t tallied in boys who enjoying putting their hands in snake-cages willingly. Who yearned to become one with the poison.

He was bleeding, but so was the snake. “I call this the ourobours act, a way of poison flowing back into itself like a circle, enabling renewal, repetition, rebirth.” The snakeroot’s body began coiling itself around his arm as the fangs dug deeper, a steady ribbon of blood now flowing free from the puncture marks. “I was eight when I began building my immunity to poison. Eight when I had my first bite.” His lips quirked. “To become immune to something, you have to build your defenses brick by damning brick.”

He gutted the snake with a quick swipe of the dagger. Its body slumped to the ground like a severed rope.

“To become the poison, you must let it in.”

That was when a low shuddering of metal hinges filled the hall. Slowly, it gave way to another sound, a much … hungry one, a growl. Pairs of scarlet, beady eyes materialized in the shadows of the now-opened alcoves around Rafael. They watched him for a moment, studying their prey, before they detached themselves from the mouths of the cages, prowling into the glow cast by the fluorescents. Silky jet-black gleamed. Slit-shaped nostrils flared as they scented the air. But the features would terrify a person should most likely be the blood-rimmed eyes and the teeth: long, snarling teeth that dripped with spittle.

Hellhounds. Hades', to be specific.

Murmurs arose through the training center. He hadn’t told anyone about these, no one except his trainer, and he stole a glimpse at Hades then, expecting a reaction.

But the hounds moved quick, so swiftly that Rafael thought his scheme failed. One pounced at his back, his teeth ready to tear, and if he hadn’t pivoted on his heel during the last instant, his neck would been torn. Good luck stitching that apart.

He drew in a ragged breath. Had I been too proud?

No. Focus.

He could do this. Five hellhounds and one snake—bad odds. Really bad odds. But as his palms closed on the smooth, obsidian-handled grips hidden in his trousers, he knew how to even them.
Rafael smirked when the second hound lunged and opened its jaws, right as the barrel of his gun raised itself at it and the firing mechanism snapped in place.

Bang. It blasted through the hound’s skull, exploding it in a shower of viscera and blood. Teeth clattered like marbles, tick-tick-ticking across the tiles, as he spun towards another hound. His veins—his poisoned veins—shuddered in horrible anticipation.

The other hounds snarled through their teeth, angry now. One of their own was dead, and oh wasn’t it so admirable, the way a pack protected and looked one another? It was terribly unlike a den of snakes: selfish, self-centered, and smug, all qualities that flitted across his face as his slitted eyes regarded the remaining four.

Four hounds, ten bullets. Much better odds.

But the two hounds that rushed through had a scheme of their own too, it seemed, as they came at him from varying angles. One’s teeth lunged at Rafael’s side, a hungry bite that would have torn flesh if he hadn’t swatted it away with his boot, but the other used its claws on it, slashing him on his arm. Pain burned down there in three scorching gashes, enough to send him reeling back, teeth gnashed. He fired—bang!—and blasted the second one’s throat.

“Well-deserved,” Rafael hissed, moving the barrel towards the third. Now it’s your turn. He pulled the trigger again.

And the hound dodged it.

Huh?

It dodged it, moving so quickly that the bullet pinged off the tile harmlessly, and now, damn it, damn it, it was making for him, teeth bared, spittle quivering between each fang, eyes bloodshot—

Shoot it again!

His instincts kicked in at the last moment, and as did the firing mechanism that clicked and the room went bang!

Rafael’s lungs burned with the gunsmoke he inhaled. Of course the hellhound dodged it. For all their hunger and savagery, he could see a gleam of intellect in the eyes of the two remaining hounds that had begun circling him, prowling low and ready for a weak spot, for open flesh. Rafael regarded them back. One second. Two. Three. Four, and so on … time dwindling as they each waited for the first move.

He made it first. Right as one hound was in front of him, he angled his pistol back and pulled the trigger on the second right behind him. A gamble. And it succeeded, with blood splattering across the tiles as the beast fell, much to terror of the last standing hound.

Rafael smirked. He pocketed one of his revolvers, and pressed the barrel of the other to his lips, right against the sly curve of his mouth. Perhaps he would spare this one, let it go back to the den and lick its wounds. Perhaps there was enough blood.

He shrugged. The barrel of the gun moved in a neat arc towards the hound and he blasted it through the skull once more.

Mercy was for fools.

He sheathed the remaining revolver. The room stood quiet, now painted red with gore, scattered in bloody heaps of flesh and bone. Quite a mess he had made, right? Rafael tugged a white handkerchief out of his pocket with a dramatic flourish and began wiping the blood off of himself with it. The initials engraved on the handkerchief were, of course, a R and a S.

“ Mr. Hades Lochlan,” Rafael drawled then, looking up at the other’s gaunt face, a god of death’s. “Junior Mutt Engineer under Minerva Hale, now promoted to Gamemakers amid soaring excitement and anticipation. The public is dying to what sort of game you have for them, what breed of monsters you have conjured up from the depths of hell, so …” His features twisted then, molding themselves to a look of contemplation, “so it would be awfully disappointing if such excitement yielded unfavorable results, right? Another victor from Twelve?” He scoffed. “Ten?”

Then his brown eyes slithered over to the Maryn, her beauty cast in marble, mesmerizing yet oh so hollow. “Miss. Maryn Hale,” he greeted, “the predecessor of the great Minerva, the Capitol’s favorite sorceress who drew the victory card by making Ridley a winner. It was interesting that when I was researching, I heard a lot of your sister and so little of you. Made me curious, and I reckon public is, too. Will she reach the bar her sister set? Will she surpass it? Or,” his other hand presses itself against his chest then in a show of despondence, his features crumbling to a sorrowful frown, “will she never free herself from Minerva’s shadow?”

And soon he was looking at the legend herself, Cricket Antoinette, the refined gamemaker. “You are the star, Miss Antoinette, a show-woman, and so imagine my sorrows when I read your games have only crowned victors who trickled quicker than sand in an hourglass. Kassandra, from what I’ve heard, has made elaborate plans to waste away her good years with orphans, and … has anyone ever heard from Shel-who in ages?” He tilted his head wonderingly, and then rolled his shoulders to brush it off.

“Perhaps she got herself lost in yet another dreamscape.”

He stomped down on the half-shorn face of a hound, making a sick squelch as it broke under his heel.

“There are many choices this year, such a brilliant cast. Another lion with a crown, or perhaps a Bellisario? A good victor from Two is long overdue because,” his shoulders rise again lackadaisically, coupled with a roll of his eyes, “Shy disappeared.” Such a marvelous games, all for the boy to leave the public eye after his victory. Rafael would call that a barren victory, yielding no fruit. And what about these games? Would it be fruitful?

It depended on the three before him.

“So many tributes, so many victors, and yet they are rarely novelties. They spend their lives avoiding danger or trying to forget. And they die. I’d risk everything to get what I want, and then I’d bask it.”

But what does he want? What does he crave?

Victory? Power? Fame?

Rafael looked up at them, trying to hold the gazes of all three.

His smirk was the dark crescent of a midnight moon.

“And I want everything.”

Even if the world were ashes, he would rule it. Give him the crown of bones, give him the scepter of the death. Whisper in his ear sweetly, reverently: the serpent king of the ashes.

“I vowed to make Seven a career district if I win and now that’s,” he nodded, “that’s new. That’s fresh.” And the games needed fresh. Needed a new flavor. Looking up at the gamemakers, Rafael was a boy making a deal with three devils as he said: “So, let’s broker an arrangement. I walk out of here with your best score, and I make your games a feast to remember for ages. I make it poisonous, deadly.” He smiles through the burn from the venom in his veins.

“And I win it. All of it. An ouroboros act: one is all, by it all, and for it all.”

There was his scheme.

There was his secret.

Rafael waved his now bloodstained handkerchief as he did his most dramatic bow. The performance was over, and if anyone wanted to access how he did, let them look at the floor. He waved away the antivenom one of the trainers rushed to him with, and the last thought he had as he was walking out was this: let’s hope Orville King won’t trip on all the blood.

'til i'm bloody and bruised
'til i've broken my bones
'til i won't be abused
'til i'm laughing alone

lyrics: rob cantor — i'm gonna win

you are somebody that I don't know, but you're taking shots at me like it's patrón
and i'm just like "damn, it's 7 a.m."
say it in the street, that's a knock-out, but you say it in a tweet, that's a cop-out
and i'm just like, "hey, are you okay?"

The stink of cooked human flesh distracts Cricket throughout the entirety of the session that follows Peter Webster-Văduva's pyrotechnic studded battle, her lip twisted and neck muscles twitching. Even with the ventilation system kicked into overdrive she can't focus properly and simply nods when Maryn and Hades propose a five for the second boy from Six. "Sure."

When she's offered a glass of champagne, this time she finally accepts. It helps. The first bubbling sip gives her a new sensory experience to concentrate on and the second sip begins relaxing the knots in her muscles. By the time Rafael Salazar enters the room she's shaken off the worst of the flashbacks and steals one last moment for herself, quickly thanking Ripred that her Games wasn't one to encourage cannibalism. She was hungry enough to satisfy the requirements of the event's name, but never quite so desperate as others have been.  

The confident click-clack of well polished shoes reminds her of what it was all for. Cricket Antoinette will endure anything, sacrifice anything, she will lay her life on the line every time for the opportunity to give a performance that history itself can never forget, because that's immortality. Her body is an act of god. It's immediately apparent that the boy below shares her rare brand of self-sacrificial greed.  

Rafael Salazar opens his arms wide with theatricality, bowing to demonstrate his keen awareness of the audience. Everything is for the audience — his ravenous expression, the extravagant snakeskin suit, and every choice he makes of what to present openly to the Gamemakers and what to keep secreted away in order to maintain strategic control of their curiosity. This is not a person who forgets details or gambles impulsively. Walking into the unknown would be a carefully weighed choice, never a foolish whim. Risks are meant to be measured, just as surely as they are worthy of being taken.  

The air is electric, because he decides he wants it to be.

"The pleasure's all mine, Mr. Lochlan, Ms. Hale, and of course, Ms. Antoinette." The greeting wants something from them, but betrays no hint of what. Their attention, obviously. That alone would be a difficult task for many, but it's effortless for him because he understands the importance of exchange. Everything about Rafael promises to be what they want him to be, if only they can promise to be what he wishes for in return. It's a risky proposition for all of them. Cricket measures that risk and deems it worthy of leaning in.

With a snap of his fingers a metallic CLANG reverberates throughout the room. A gleaming cage is unveiled, the verdure snake within flicking its tongue on cue. It's more than ready to taste the air, anticipating the sweet promise of freedom.

They are twins, the snake and Rafael's suit. One finds its way to the ground after the other as the snake slithers through the opened gate and the boy peels away his jacket, his tie, and finally his shirt. Knife in hand, they unfurl to meet each other with equally predatory eyes.

Neither moves.

Neither blinks.

Finally, it is the smaller of the two snakes that darts forward with a hiss, sinking its fangs into flesh, and Rafael —

He welcomes the poison into his veins.

It's his confident smirk that rips a cackle of mad laughter from Cricket's throat. The two creatures below are not at odds; the two creatures below are one and the same. Fists clench with firm determination as Rafael revels in the hellfire coursing through his bloodstream. The realization that this performance is years in the making dawns on his audience, one by one, transforming gasps of panic into gasps awe.

  "I call this the ourobours act, a way of poison flowing back into itself like a circle, enabling renewal, repetition, rebirth." Unable to tear her eyes from the scene of the snakeroot coiling itself ever more tightly around the boy's arm, its fangs digging deeper as blood flows from the wound, Cricket blindly and frantically scribbles a passionate TWELVE on the scoresheet. "I was eight when I began building my immunity to poison." The scars inside her throat from holding fire and swords where they were never meant to be burn with a fierce kinship. "Eight when I had my first bite. To become immune to something, you have to build your defenses brick by damning brick." She knows.

He guts the snake with a quick swipe of the dagger and Cricket yelps in shock. This... no. Maybe she's wrong.

i ain't tryna mess with your self-expression
but i've learned the lesson that stressing
and obsessing about somebody else is no fun
and snakes and stones never broke my bones so

"To become the poison, you must let it in."

Metal rings through the hall once more and she could snap her own neck for how quickly she turns to search for the source. A growl emanates from the shadows and she growls back, an unfounded sense of betrayal flaring within her chest. Hellhounds leap from the shadows of their cages, their void-black fur gleaming impossibly bright beneath the lights.

When Rafael looks up, she expects his eyes to meet her own — the keeper of tigers, elephants, and dancing bears — but confusion sparks chaos within her as she follows his gaze to Hades. The smirk on Lochlan's face would be unsettling even without the intensity of his eyes and it turns her stomach to realize... these hellhounds are his fucking pets.

Digging her fingers into Arbor's fur, Cricket snarls at them both, her hands shaking with rage as Salazar levels the barrel of a gun at the nearest hound. Its skull explodes, hailing bone fragments and bits of brain across the room. The massive cat curled up in her lap keens with confusion. The scent of blood is one thing and the smell of cooked flesh another, but a taste of Cricket's wrath is rare and bewildering. He licks her cheek and nudges her jaw upward with his nose, hoping to help. If something gets her down then he will help her back up, he promises.

Another gunshot splits the air and Cricket grits her teeth, nudging her own nose into Arbor's chubby, whiskered cheek. She's okay. He'll always be okay too, she promises.

She can't bring herself to look back at Hades again. She doesn't want to watch him lose his beloved companions; she doesn't want to watch if the truth is there was never any love at all.

Survival is one thing, a competition of necessity. Whether or not the players bow and curtsy, the way that Maryn wishes they would, it's always possible to fight with respect. The victor of the 63rd games has never sobbed herself to sleep over the lives of the creatures or children that she took for the sake of her own, because every battle she fought was essential and — always — a battle of equals.

"Well-deserved," Rafael hisses as the second hound is shot through the throat. Bullshit. It's blasphemy to claim that these creatures deserve to be picked off for sport by someone who's life isn't truly on the line. If Rafael dies here then he'll be resuscitated the same way so many tributes have been brought back to life before, when the Capitol decided it wasn't their time yet. These hellhounds don't share that privilege. If one of them succeeds in killing this boy then it'll be put down to punish the victory.

Despite that, Cricket roots for the hounds.

Bullets ricochet off tile and misfire into dark corners. He's no sharpshooter, that's for sure. As is so often the case, a weak man thinks he can compensate with a strong weapon. It's a classic mistake. Every pull of the firearm's trigger chips away at Cricket's good opinion of him, revealing a shocking depth of cruelty and weakness. One hound falls after another until only one remains, retreating in surrender. Its back turned, Rafael smirks and kisses the revolver, barbarically shooting the creature in the back of its head. Instead of sympathy, he has only a shrug to offer the litter of corpses.

Thinly veiled amusement plays with the corner of his lips as he pulls out a monogramed handkerchief to dab at the blood spatters on his face. Cricket spits at the glass between them. It oozes downward, warping his face as she glares at the scene below.

you are somebody that we don't know
but you're coming at my friends like a missile
why are you mad? when you could be glaad?
sunshine on the street at the parade, but you would rather be in the dark ages
just making that sign must've taken all night

  "Mr. Hades Lochlan," the vile boy drawls, "Junior Mutt Engineer under Minerva Hale, now promoted to Gamemaker amid soaring excitement and anticipation. The public is dying to see what sort of game you have for them, what breed of monsters you have conjured up from the depth of hell, so..." It must be true; Cricket must be going soft. For her to mistake someone like this as one of her own is beyond absurd. She's been far too quick to see the good in this year's tributes and forgot herself. Everything about this boy is so obvious now, but she was willing to swallow his snake oil without waiting to find out what truly motivates him. "So it would be awfully disappointing if such excitement yielded unfavorable results, right? Another victor from Twelve?" He scoffs. "Ten?"

Rafael turns his eyes to the next of them. "Miss Maryn Hale," his politeness slips away, despite the tone of his voice hardly shifting, "the predecessor of the great Minerva, the Capitol's favorite sorceress who drew the victory card by making Ridley a winner. It was interesting that when I was researching, I heard a lot of your sister and so little of you. Made me curious, and I reckon the public is, too. Will she reach the bar her sister set? Will she surpass it? Or," hand to chest, his expression melts into a mockery of sorrow, "will she never free herself from Minerva's shadow?"

It's disappointingly unsophisticated, the way this child attempts to poke at the supposed weaknesses of his overlords. He lacks creativity, going for all of the obvious jabs that, if ever they were truly a sore spot to begin with, have calloused to nearly impenetrable armor now. There's nothing new to be found when reciting old headlines. He's too far out of his league and the desperation to fake it 'til he makes it is showing. They should be playing bingo with all of the cliches being touted, his chest puffed up like he's really thinks he's on to something.

By the time he turns to her, Cricket is so bored with his predictable remarks that even her temper over the hounds has waned. "You are the star, Miss Antoinette, a show-woman," he looks up to her and she yawns languorously, manicured fingers artfully picturesque against her lips, "and so imagine my sorrows when I read your games have only crowned victors who trickled quicker than sand in an hourglass." His sorrows, indeed. "Kassandra, from what I've heard, has made elaborate plans to waste away her good years with orphans, and..." Of course he's the type to find humanity to be a waste of effort. If only the efforts of his research had discovered that Cricket has spent her own lifetime quietly helping people off the streets, giving away her victor's house and renaming complete strangers as found family. Oh, then he'd really have something to feel sorrow for. "...has anyone ever heard from Shel-who in ages?" He rolls his shoulders, brushing off one of the most impressive women in all of Games history, who fought her way to survival against greater odds than this boy apparently knows how to fathom. "Perhaps she got herself lost in yet another dreamscape."

and we see you over there on the internet
comparing all the girls who are killing it
but we figured you out
we all know now, we all got crowns
you need to calm down

Had he done proper research then Rafael would have quickly discovered that Cricket has never been ashamed of the victors of her Games. This is no great secret. A force to be reckoned with is worth watching, regardless of where they’re from, the same way a small mind is a small mind no matter how much self-importance it tries to paint itself with. Cricket couldn’t be prouder of the incredible women who championed the 75th and 82nd Games. Shelby and Kassandra earned their crowns; Cricket made certain of that. If this waste of a beautiful snakeskin suit wants a crown of his own then he’ll need to realize that he doesn’t have arms enough to pull as many people down as he would need to reach the top. That would be an endless, futile battle. What a laughably bad strategy.

Instead he’ll have to prove himself worthy of the very people he professes to disdain and earn their respect back the hard way. Victors don’t always like each other, but even the fiercest hatred for one another is tangled up with frustratingly indestructible respect for what each of them has survived. No one understands this better than Gamemaker Antoinette, Queen Villain of the victors.

Salazar stomps the half-shorn face of a hound, an amateur gangster wearing cruelty like a costume. "There are many choices this year, such a brilliant cast. Another lion with a crown, or perhaps a Bellisario? A good victor from Two is long overdue because," apparently someone proving themselves in two separate Games still isn't enough for some people, "Shy disappeared. So many tributes, so many victors, and yet they are rarely novelties. They spend their lives avoiding danger or trying to forget. And they die. I'd risk everything to get what I want, and then I'd bask in it." It's his inability to resist laying out his Master Plan — like a cartoon arch nemesis — that finally cracks Cricket, inexplicable giggles bursting from her mouth. "And I want everything."

Fanning herself, she gestures blindly at the room. "Someone loosen my corset, I need air." The giggling escalates and Arbor joins in with a rumbling, open-mouth purr, delighted that he has succeeded in cheering mom up. "It's too much."

"I vowed to make Seven a career district if I win and now that's," he nods with such self-confidence that everyone is hanging on his every word, certain that it's impossible for them to be anything less than mesmerized by a monologue of unimaginative insults and unchecked greed for something he doesn't seem to want badly enough to consider the option of earning it. "That's new. That's fresh." There's nothing new here, nothing fresh except the corpses of Lochlan's pets. "So, let's broker an arrangement. I walk out of here with your best score, and I make your games a feast to remember for the ages. I make it poisonous, deadly."

Oh, bless your heart, it's already ten different kinds of poisonous and deadlier than a mind like yours can imagine. "Good thing we bred our snakeroot with taipan venom for an extra bit of fun," Cricket tries to catch her breath between hysteric giggles, "I'll be interested to see how his party trick fares against that."

you just need to take several seats and then try to restore the peace
and control your urges to scream about all the people you hate

He's still chattering on. "And I win it." And on. "All of it." And on. "An ouroboros act: one is all, by it all, and for it all." Cricket hopes it’s one of the Twelves that silence his mouth for good.

The white monogramed handkerchief he flourishes his final bow with looks like a bloodstained flag of surrender, but Rafael Salazar clearly doesn't realize that. It's convenient of him to already be armed for defeat.

"How delusional," Maryn sighs as Cricket takes her scoresheet for the boy over to the buffet table — the premature TWELVE on the page snickering at her like it just played an absolutely marvelous prank — nonchalantly ripping it to pieces and feeding the remnants to the flame of a warming candle. "He thinks he has control here? It'll be fun to watch the moment he realizes just how powerless he truly is."

"Urgh." Heartbreaking. The worst person she knows just made a great point. "You're so right, Maryn." That will be fun to watch. Cricket quickly turns her attention to Hades before her and Hale agreeing becomes A Thing.

There's an eight on Lochlan's scoresheet. Cricket balks.

"Nooooo," she throws her arms over his shoulders from behind, laying her cheek on the top of his head for a moment before blinking down at Hades with a shamelessly teasing expression, "no, no, no. Don't tell me this is your kink, Lochlan! Oh, you can do better than this." Dramatically waving her arms up and down Maryn's perfectly poised frame she does a double take between the two of them. "Look at this woman! My god, look at her shoes." For all the jesting, there's a firm stance of sincerity beneath it all. "This woman could curb stomp the hell out of you; just beg for it politely." Rolling her eyes she shoots a look of disgust at the scene below, avoxes mopping up blood and piling bone fragments into buckets with their bare hands. "Don't fall for the first sociopath to butcher your dogs. You're better than that, darling." They deserved better too.

Taking a peek at Maryn's sheet, Cricket sees yet another one confidently written on the page and this time she has to raise her champagne glass to toast it. It's a beautiful sight, simple and worthy, but she can't help noting one thing: "Mediocrity is worse than failure for someone like him," lacking her own score sheet, Cricket leans down to wrap her hand around Maryn's, guiding the pen to make a small angled swipe through the score, "he deserves a four."

Despite their moment of solidarity, touching Maryn's things nearly gets Cricket killed. A rather complex twist and spin is required to escape unscathed, the champagne flute becoming a casualty of their conflict. "No, thank you," Cricket declines a replacement glass as the shattered fragments of the original are collected, her co-Gamemakers back to debating Rafael's final score as if there's nothing else of interest going on.

Forgoing the champagne, she instead picks up a bottle of H8ERADE from the table — a garishly pedestrian bit of sponsorship snuck into their contracts — the lid audibly cracking as it's unscrewed. Glacier Bitch flavor, her own Cheshire grin leers from the holographic label, a perfect picture of icy violet steel and glittering custom nakom mech. It's unexpectedly satisfying in this moment. "I want background checks on all of the tributes. Make them thorough." She won't be so quick to allow these children to endear themselves to her in the future. More than one attendant snaps into action. "Send the files to my room; I expect them to be waiting for me by the time we're done here."

you need to calm down, you're being too loud
and I'm just like, uh-oh, you need to just stop
like, can you just not
step on our gowns? you need to calm down

you need to calm down taylor swift

Cricket: 12... 4
Maryn: 1
Hades: 8
Final score: 6

Last Edit: Mar 2, 2022 22:33:03 GMT -5 by napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.

堕落天使

esther kim d3 {lance}
Head Librarian

3,668 POSTS

Pronouns: He/Him/His
Member is Online

gay and chaotic? call it gayos

☆ 90th pts's ☆ Mar 3, 2022 1:17:07 GMT -5

Quote

Post by esther kim d3 {lance} on Mar 3, 2022 1:17:07 GMT -5

F A T I M A

It's nerve-wracking, really, to find yourself here. No rivals, no allies, no nothing - just yourself, a handful of Peacekeepers, and the three individuals who would make up the team controlling your very life as if you were a puppet on a string.

They disgust you, really. The former Victor who, instead of finding the act of being forced to kill other kids repulsive, had instead sucked up to the Capitol and now found herself amongst its chief architects, torturing others the same way she had been tortured time and time again (and if she was the best that Two had to offer, it was no wonder that only one of the district's charges had come back in the decades since her victory). And the Capitolite duo, citizens who had no doubt grown up wealthy, comfortable, and utterly devoid of emotion when it came to murdering children across the nation for entertainment purposes. You wondered, briefly, if they were actually psychopaths who got off on coming up with intricate ways to maim and murder, or if they were simply so out of touch with the realities of the districts that that they didn't even see you as equals.

Either way, it wouldn't be your first time faced with Capitolite cruelty.

But the side of you that holds that disgust, the side of you that had been so adamant to enter the games in the first place, is a deeply held secret, one not told even to Patricia or your three motley allies. To the outside world, you're simply Fatima al-Amin, a poor healer girl with the misfortune of being descended from the bloodline of one of Five's original victors, thrust into the Games out of spite more than anything else. And though the Private Training Sessions are indeed as private as they come, with the general consensus being to hold nothing back and show the world just who you were made of, you can't do that. Not fully. Not unless you want to paint a big red target on your back to the Gamemakers. Make one false move, make one careless slip-up, and you may as well be painting a target on your back that screams "Dirty Rebel Scum! Kill Brutally and Painfully!"

So you'll stick to your act. And it's not even an act, really, so much as you returning to your roots. The Fatima you must play is the Fatima who never discovered her parents' involvement in the rebellion, the tired eldest sibling who works herself to the bone to make ends meet and keep her brother and sister out of the orphanage, the girl who carries a Victor's name yet is so far removed from his privilege that it carries all of the burdens and none of the benefits.

But even without any rebel training or support, that Fatima still has tricks of her own up her sleeve. And that Fatima still has the same desperation to win, the same drive to do whatever it takes to win and get back home.

That Fatima is polite, smiling and curtsying to the Gamemakers, years worth of practice hiding her emotions working with the sick and injured paying off. That Fatima would show off her only obvious strength - her skill with the healing arts - and paint that to the world, Gamemakers included, as her saving grace.

A largely unthreatening girl with a quick mind, fast fingers, and an ability to stitch herself up flawlessly after battle. But how many of those had you seen on your television screen year after year? How many of those had ended up getting high scores? Or, dare you say, winning?

No. To stand out - in the right way, not in the way that would get you swarmed by mutts on the second day - you needed to do more. Prove that you didn't just have the stomach to heal wounds, but the determination necessary to end a life, as well.

And luckily for you, there were more ways to accomplish that than simply bashing a skull in with an oversized mace.

Your process begins simply - dragging a singular dummy over from the combat station to the plants station and lying them down on their backs. Next, you garner a knife from the weapons station and a first-aid kid from the first-aid station, before finally getting to work.

The beginning of the process is simple, unremarkable. You slice open the arm of your dummy with your knife, and within minutes are able to stitch it back up, good as new. For many tributes, that'd be enough - a declaration to the Gamemakers that, with the right supplies, they could be quite self sufficient.

It is not enough for you, as when you stand, you do not make for the exit, but to the plants in storage instead. And not for those typically used for food, or for healing - no, the ones you were after were for an altogether more nefarious purpose.

You grin ever so slightly as you return to your work, a sizeable amount of the most toxic plants known to mankind carefully gathered. Sure, you were a healer, and since you didn't have the resources of a Capitolite hospital you'd become quite familiar with the natural aspect of healing as well as the manmade.

And on the flipside, you knew what not to use for healing, what to avoid unless the goal was to bring about a quick, painful death. Plants like nightlock. Rosary. Yew.

It's with great precision and care that you poke the needle of your first aid kit through each of the toxic plants in turn (for, while it would better to accidentally prick yourself for the first time in years here where you were literally banned from death, it would still be quite the embarrassment that you would rather avoid) and with even more precision and care that you show off exactly what you are doing. That coating the needle in the juice of toxic plants is, in fact, intended.

You wait as long as you can for the juices to dry, knowing that the less suspicion you can raise with a wet needle the better (and that any amount of poison would work when anything less than a sterile needle was highly dangerous to stick into someone, for fear of infection or disease) before returning to your work

The second slice on your dummy is nearly identical to the first, simply higher up on the arm, yet the process of stitching is identical, save for the tools involved. When the process is done, and your dummy, were it a real person, has been sufficiently poisoned, you stand up, pack the first aid kit back so that it looks practically new and untouched, and return it to the first-aid station supplies.

Your time runs out precisely at that moment, so you turn towards the Gamemakers for the second and last time. And with a knowing wink, you quickly and quietly exit stage right.

elegant

"Can you believe it?"

Her grin is jagged as she turns to face her co-gamemakers, a strange kind of glee reflecting in her ice blue eyes. It's like she's staring at a corpse, not a person, and noticing the pretty flowers breaking through the skin. In death, some creatures are better off. "A tribute with manners. And here I thought civility was dead in the districts." Admittedly, it's the politeness and attention to the time limit that wins Maryn's favor more than anything else, writing down a nine on her clipboard before the discussion can even begin.

It warms her heart when the damned play their part without a fuss.

Truly, the monologues are so boring.

Hades and Cricket, in a rare moment of synergy, match her score entirely. The former remarks that he wants to see Fatima fight the girl from Nine, happy to see that she's not afraid to play dirty, while the latter only wishes the performance hadn't been quite so stiff. It's a kind of pageantry that can only be displayed on the battlefield. While Maryn isn't sure she's capable of taking the crown, the gamemaker would be a fool to ignore the tribute's second place position in the skills assessment. After all, the runner up in a finale is just as vital to the Games as the victor.

"Frankly, Cricket, I find it refreshing that we didn't have to watch another explosion." She rolls her eyes at the child sitting across from her, not at all taking her position as a gamemaker seriously — a choice that Maryn questions to this day. "Trust me, I'm not humoring the idea that someone from Five is going to win. I just think there's something to appreciate about a little social grace." She inspects the dummy once more, the two neatly symmetrical stitches running up either arm.

"That kind of precision is impressive. Actually," she quickly strikes through the 9, writing down a sharp and final 10, "narratively, this one deserves a top score." Her team nods in approval, making their adjustments accordingly. She's taking a sip of her wine when her eyes glance at the medkit returned to the first aid station by Fatima, lips grimacing at the thought of the tribute's fingers holding the needle, none the wiser about the poison lying in wait. "You," she snaps over her shoulder at an Avox, pointing to the item like it's become radioactive, "make sure that gets disinfected before we finish here."

The tributes are all filth.

And they will all be purged.

credit to darsypoo uwu

credit to fireflyz!

credit to stare!

brad bradford ★ d5b [arx]
Retired Staff

2,484 POSTS

Pronouns: she/her
last seen Nov 4, 2024 18:47:44 GMT -5

literally so gay, doing so many crimes

☆ 90th pts's ☆ Mar 3, 2022 11:36:49 GMT -5

Quote

Post by brad bradford ★ d5b [arx] on Mar 3, 2022 11:36:49 GMT -5

malaki-boden w/a
_{aka "kiibo"}

He points again to the schematics of the 89th arena on the pad he'd rigged to do so. It hadn't been anything as complicated as the "bomb" making portion of his display, but he was proud of it all the same. He points out the last known path of Cecily and her allies on the day everyone theorizes she blew herself up. Or rather, blew up her- friends, he supposed.

Sometimes friends don't mean to hurt you.

"And that concludes my theory," he stands proudly with his fists on his hips, looking between the three of them very deliberately. Eye contact was important, even if he didn't quite understand the concept himself.

But he hoped his display would speak loudly enough.

A pun.

Since it's a bomb.

Well, not technically a bomb, but-

"There simply wasn't a way for Cecily Deerling to have blown up anything, let alone an entire force field array that has been maintained for years."

But he would argue in favor of exploring the situation further. The reason everyone was talking and theorizing about it in the first place was because there was so little available footage; he'd spent his nights watching re-runs and studying movements, techniques, strategies. But Cecily's story is chopped into bits and difficult to follow and it's even more difficult to discern what items she had ever actually obtained.

It was frustrating and worth noting his concerns, but he'd been instructed quite specifically not to, "Say shit about shit when you don't know shit."

He just understood how to make things work, how to take things in their smallest parts and build them into something bigger. Or, rather- different. And usually, barring the occasional mishap, better. He had hope this would be one of those times that he'd done everything correctly.

"This is an incendiary device I've constructed using pieces of a pack of pens, some choice volatile substances- all of which I acquired from items commonly sponsored -some duct tape, metal rings from a tarp, instant cold packs, twine, wicks from a pair of oil lanterns, and I also fashioned this simple black match fuse from parts I found taking apart the oven in the kitchen. Quite the remarkable piece of machinery, I probably could've built a small robot friend if I'd only had more time, but-"

Well.

"Anyway, as you can see, I constructed this device relatively quickly, yes, but likely not quickly enough to not be noticed by an audience or even more-so, Gamemakers such as yourselves."

He picks up the device he had crafted and places it in the rather makeshift mortar tube he'd fashioned from some plastic water bottles- and again, duct tape. Any true inventors best friend! Madison probably would've already blown this place up.

"It should also be noted that the amount of precipitation that day would've likely nullified any sort of device she could have made," he puts on his safety goggles, earmuffs, fireproof gloves, and lights a match, kneeling at the fuse and nodding for the lights to be switched off. "The likelihood of this succeeding in the rain is very low."

Then he lights the fuse and sprints as fast as he can, ducking behind a table and turning to assess his work just as the device bursts high into the air and CRACKS! before bursting into a beautiful bloom of crackling light that danced for a moment in the air before fizzling out in trails toward the floor.

"Fireworks truly are the most beautiful of all the pyrotechnic displays," and he switches the light back on.

"Wouldn't you agree?"

--------------------------

"Well, he is right, and he should say it."

On that regard, there is nothing to dispute. "The whole situation is just ridiculous." She stares at the dying embers on the training room floor, replaying the firework in her mind, illuminating the darkness — remembering the unreleased footage of Cecily Deerling trying to disarm the forcefield with a makeshift bomb. The 89th gamemakers did as much as they could to hide the details of the scandal, and yet here they are in the 90th, listening to the theories of a tribute from Eight, talking about a ghost whose name has long since been erased from her gravestone. There are no bones to unearth. The damage is done.

These are dangerous waters.

And he's in a room full of sharks.

She writes down a 9, higher than Hades' 8 and Cricket's 5, feeling almost chipper as the fury inside of her mixes with the alcohol she's been steadily drinking throughout the evening. Something about imagining the punishment she has in store for these kids is more fulfilling than anything else. "Still, just the mention of that girl's name makes my hair stand on end." The tribute-turned-victor-turned-gamemaker whines that the showing was too boring, as if she's found herself stuck in another school lesson. The depths of her true education, however, Maryn doubts. She rolls her eyes to make it clear she doesn't approve this opinion.

"It's good that he agrees with us, but frankly, I suggest that we make sure his theories never make it out of the arena." One look at Lochlan proves that there's an understanding between them, a discomfort at the idea that this tribute is digging for secrets in off-limits territory. For all wrong choices, there must be swift and merciless retribution. "Think if we have some mutts chase him into the Badlands, he'll keep running until he fries himself on the barrier?" She chuckles cruelly at this idea, penning down an agreed upon score of 7.

"Pity. He wouldn't survive long enough to make it there."

"I run on the road, long before I dance under the lights."

Cait
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if looks could kill

☆ 90th pts's ☆ Mar 14, 2022 8:52:40 GMT -5

Quote

Post by Cait on Mar 14, 2022 8:52:40 GMT -5

context: incoming x

The morning of the Private Training Sessions arrives, and I’ve barely slept all night. I’ve exhausted myself running around in circles in my head with Rafael’s words playing on repeat.

“You’re a murderer already. And soon, everyone will know. They’ll take you away and split you open and there’ll be nothing you can do to stop it.”

The snake disguised as a man, gorging himself on other people’s vulnerabilities; I’ve never felt so angry. I don’t know how he found out about the soft swell of my stomach, but I’m not surprised, not really. It was bound to happen eventually.

Secrets don’t stay buried for long enough.

I’ve prepared for the worst, hands balled into tight fists and ready to lash out at the first person to so much as lay a hand on me. But as I make my way to the Training Centre, I don’t attract any new glances. There’s no guards in white suits standing around the corner ready to pull me away and tear me to pieces. I’m the same stupid girl from District Eleven with a death wish, and nothing more.

I let myself relax a little. Not all the way, but just enough to ease the choking grip on my heart.

Truthfully, I hadn’t put much thought into the private training session. Kirito had said it was your first chance to make an impression on the Gamemakers. I can’t really understand what that matters in the grand scheme of things. No amount of sword-wielding or javelin-throwing is going to change the fact that we are nothing more than pawns of their game. They don’t owe us anything, and likewise. In theory, at least.

But the cards are stacked against us, never an even playing field, and so I find myself playing along like a good shepherd, if only to make Kirito happy.

I feel their eyes on me before I see them, swimming high above me and entrapped in a case of impenetrable glass. I don’t know what I was expecting – indifference, maybe? A distracted audience with no care for a tiny girl from a lower district with no skills of note to show off with. But I get silence and stone-cold stares instead; I shudder under the pressure.

A metal stand stacked with weapons sits off to my left, and I approach it slowly. Most of my time in the training centre had been spent at the non-combat stations, for there was something so intimidating about the glinting silver blades – even now, with my life on the line, I feel the unease rising up. But I’d handled a few of the small throwing knives, and one or two of the javelins, and not felt completely out of my depths with the sleek throwing weapons. They were not completely foreign, like the brute heaviness of a barbaric axe, and that would have to be enough.

I pick up a slender javelin and weigh it carefully in my hands. There is nothing soft about it. I feign an attack, staying light on my feet, simply trying to buy time as I struggle to bring the loose threads of a plan together. It’s stupidity at its finest, but it’s the best I can do.

Noreen Lyvers. A name from another lifetime. Twenty-six weeks pregnant and forced to become a mother two months too early.

Forced to abandon her children as she met her end in an island from hell.

I am a ticking time bomb. Any second now, the world is going to implode, and the fallout will obliterate the one thing I’m fighting for. They’ll learn the truth about my own second life. They’ll ask why I didn’t volunteer anyone else if I knew I was pregnant, and laugh when I tell them the world changes when you learn you are a mother. That you can’t fathom putting another mama’s child in danger – that you’d be heartbroken if it was your own son or daughter plucked from the crowd like a fallen Autumn leaf.

They won’t care, in the end. They only care about their Games running smoothly. And nothing about a secret child is smooth. They’ll solve the problem before it becomes a catastrophe. They’ll strap me to a table in the medical ward as knives dig into my skin, too soon. Or they’ll swarm me with muttations as soon as I step foot in that arena, leaving me with no chance of making it home alive.

Either way, they’ll tear the life out of me and force me to stand by and watch, powerless.

No. I can’t let that happen. I need to fight a fair game – as fair as can be.

I need to give them a reason not to go looking for secrets.

And maybe it would be smarter to do nothing, say nothing, but that feels like giving up altogether. So I finger the pin on my chest – Vasco’s parting gift to me – and make up my mind.

I drive the pointed end of the javelin into the foam carpet underfoot with more strength than I knew I had, and watch it stick proudly into the air. I return to the weapons stand again, grabbing two more and some rope, before piercing the ground with the second blade. I wrap two pieces of rope around the ends of the third javelin and tie them to the ends of the weapons driven into the ground.

Next, I move to the other side of the room and drag a dummy back to centre stage. I position it carefully under the middle of the makeshift frame and stare hard into the two button eyes, imagining they were real.

Shocking myself in the process.

Finally, I pick out one final weapon – a sword so sharp it almost cuts me immediately as I buckle under the unexpected weight and lose my grip slightly. But I persevere, tying even more knots into the rope, weaving it around the sword and carefully hooking it over the top of the roof of my crude contraption. I pull on the rope and watch the sword slowly slide to the top of the structure.

“Everyone keeps asking me why I didn’t volunteer anyone.”

My voice is soft, but it carries far thanks to the spectacular acoustics of the room and the looming silence of the lions.

“I keep telling them it was because I didn’t want to sentence someone else to die. But that’s only half true.”

Beat.

“We don’t want to play by your rules.”

My hand twitches, and the rope threatens to slip out of my sweaty grasp; I hold tighter, hold on for dear life, for two hearts beating as one.

“It’s like Mayor Izar said: we are not powerless.”

I let go and watch the sword’s blade buckle under the weight of gravity as it slices cleanly through the dummy’s head. It rolls across the floor for a second or two before coming to a sudden halt. The sound of cold metal echoes around the room, filling up my lungs. I look up at the Gamemakers, too far away to see the expressions on their faces.

“This is only the beginning.”

I unpin Vasco’s gift from my chest and place it gingerly in the centre of the room. I don’t know if they can see it yet, so far above me they reside, but when the guards come to clean up the mess, they’ll see the word “No” reflected back at them and remember a pair of tired eyes from back home broadcast on a tiny TV screen. I walk away with the weight of a brewing rebellion hanging in the air.

And if they see me tremble, let them wonder what is real.

table: kiah x

(basically figured the best way to stop everyone asking questions about why she kept her spot and stop them digging into her business/discovering she’s got a kid was to lie and say it’s all part of a rebellion plan as per Vasco Izar’s pre-reaping announcement -> crafted a very crude self-made guillotine and demonstrated a GM getting their head chopped off in the fallout)

"Hmm. It's kind of her to dig her grave for us."

She writes down a quick, reflexive one. Her gaze locks on the discarded head of the dummy that Celeste Brere tried and failed to make an example of — feeling a quieter, colder rage take the place of the white hot fury pumping through her veins. There's a badge abandoned on the training center floor, just close enough that Maryn can make out the word written across it like a bad omen. A dark stain on her favorite dress. It makes her feel like tearing something apart.

"No," she scoffs at Hades and Cricket, who suggest a three and four respectively. "I'm considering this an active threat. As if being from Eleven wasn't enough of a death sentence for her." She closes her eyes, and in the darkness of her own mind, she imagines horrors that no metaphor can describe. The last thing she wants is for a rebel to have a fulfilling end. And in a way, her co-gamemakers are right. A one is too personal. It implies that, as adversaries, they are on equal footing. Maryn scoffs, opting for a score of 3.

When she finishes with Celeste, with this traitor, there will be nothing left of her.

"I. Will. NOT. Have a Cecily Deerling," Hades comments, which makes her grin wickedly. Hungrily.

"It's not all bad, Lochlan. Don't forget that she died in the end."