Roll Initiative: The Bloodbath!

<sup>I hope Mom and Dad aren’t watching.

Actually, I hope they are. I hope the gang back home are too. And I hope they’re together, crossing their fingers and praying to gods that they don’t even believe in - wishing for a miracle.

I hope they find peace quickly. No - wait, I hope they mourn for a hundred days and nights. Is it selfish to hope they will miss me? To want to believe despite how terrible I was, that they still care? I put them through hell and will keep doing so long after I die.

Or I won’t, and they’ll carry on with their lives, and I’ll just be a memory. Shit, my hands are shaking - what am I scared of? Dying, or being forgotten?

The latter is terrifying, so when the gong sounds I run like the goddamn wind and hope death can’t catch me.</sup>

No one wanted to hear the laments of a boy who did not matter.

No one had been there when he got his score- the victor mentors hiding away in their rooms just as they'd done since arrival, Lysistrata only popping in long enough to tell Andrew he was late for something, Banana being about as useful as her namesake and Marsha still only existing as a concept in Andrew's mind as she hadn't made a single appearance since his arrival. Even his district partner was a ghost, hiding away and never speaking unless spoken to. An O'Malley, so, you know.

He'd realized partway through getting dressed that they didn't care, that they'd all given up a long time ago. Why would Kassandra spend a month of her time every year trying to save people Panem didn't want saved? Why would Harbinger risk forming an attachment to a teen who was only going to die soon? They didn't care because it was the only way they could survive, and Andrew didn't know why it surprised him that they'd choose themselves first. They had all won the games, after all. One could only be so selfless at that point.

He groaned, standing there and waiting for the peacekeepers to come and take him away, and it just didn't feel... right. He was all alone on the 11th floor, despite knowing for a fact there were people who could help just on the other side of most of the doors he could see from his vantage point. He wasn't getting any last second advice, he wasn't getting any encouragement, he wasn't getting any help. He could assume there wouldn't be any sponsorship to be had from any of them either.

Fine.

He'd do it himself; he hadn't faced a challenge he couldn't overcome yet.

The elevators opened to show Lysistrata flanked by four guards. Two for him, two for Cain, he figured.

"He hasn't come out of his room yet," Andrew said to the room, nodding down the hall, "Second door on the right."

He didn't wait for them to fetch his partner, though, instead stepping onto the elevator between his guards willingly.

"Wish me luck," he said to Lysistrata. She didn't. Either she couldn't hear or she couldn't care like the rest of them; he rolled his eyes. As the doors of the elevator slid shut, he held up two middle-finger salutes. Farewell 11th floor, he thought, you will not be missed.

"Where to next?" he asked the keepers.

"We'll be escorting you to the launch pad near the cafeteria," the shorter of the two explained, and then, since he'd been given the opportunity to talk ahead of himself, "We'll have to search you before you go aboard the hovercraft, but before we do that, do you currently have anything on you that you think we should know about?"

Andrew smiled, thought of making a joke about how his biceps should be classified as guns, didn't. "Nope. Clean as a whistle."

---

"Where's the rest of it?"

He stared at his own reflection. Roughly twenty feet above him, there was an entire hunger Games arena waiting to try and kill him. Sometimes the outfits gave some sort of insight as to what the arena would be, but taking in the different items, all he could safely assume is that the arena was hopefully not cold. The black combat boots were functional, at least, but other than that his outfit seemed to be made up of little more than some low-rise leather pants, some leather straps buckled around his arms and waist, and only a fur-lined harness covering his otherwise bare chest.

"That's all of it?"

At least he'd already been playing up the whole "sexy idiot" thing- if he'd acted like himself the whole time then everyone for sure would've known how desperately uncomfortable he was.

There was a melodious sound of several dings as the door to a platform slid open. He didn't need Banana to spell it out for him. He kissed the back of her hand as farewell, and ducked into the tube.

---

Why am I the only naked one?

That was one of his first thoughts upon rising into the arena. There were some people wearing nice robes with hats to block the sun, there were others wearing all black, their faces obscured by masks. Standing amongst them, Andrew hadn't ever felt so cheated, or so flattered. At least his approach was getting across- he'd been right in thinking they wanted him to play the assumption, not the person.

The arena itself was... hard to know from his vantage point. Most of what was left of his attention span was being occupied by the giant, looming building they all encircled. It looked like a tavern from back home, with wooden stools lining a dimly-lit bar and candle-lit chandeliers hanging from the low ceiling and a dining area, overly-lit by the natural lighting pouring in from outside. Well, at least there was daylight.

He stretched his arms into the air as time began to countdown, then his torso, before bending and stretching his legs. He should've done this before entering that tube, but he still had time- as long as he stretched each leg for about twenty seconds, his arms for twenty seconds, and his torse for ten, he'd be perfectly limber and still have ten seconds to go. He'd just finished when the timer went off, and he surged forward.