Alliance Test: Hugo, Axyl vs Xov, Marguerite

m a r g u e r i t e

Ready or not (Uh-huh), here I come, you can't hide
Gonna find you and make you want me

She doesn’t know much about what’s planned, other than a test of skill. She was aces at tests, anyway – so her courage hadn’t knotted itself up and hidden deep down in her stomach. No matter what her fidgeting hands might’ve said.

The young woman from two peered out at the boy from six and sized up – which she had been doing a lot of these days, tributes all taller than her by far – and took in where the best spot was to shred.

She knew, too, this could have implications further down the line. Action, reaction, and echo.

The third part being what he could feel long after the simulation ended.

If he was smart, and as she’d learned, most of them had baseline intelligence as it were, he’d at least open his mouth about how she performed. It didn’t have to be more than a few words, but, she wanted not to be seen as an underdog here and now. Not that a career ever earned such a title, but then, some might’ve seen the few words she offered and standoffishness as trepidation.

She chose the whip because it was unconventional, and because she so rarely saw it used in the games. Small and mighty could still strangle, lest they forget.

“Six,” She called out her target and cracked the leather of her whip with a snap. She opened and closed her free palm. She stared out at the edges of the colosseum behind them.

Without vengeance or malice but with prejudice – she struck.

The nights and days pass in a blur of hit, spit, sweat, sleep, repeat.

It's not that much different than home, really. Pops always had us in one training regimen or another, so this is like riding a goddamn bicycle. If the bicycle was dripping in gold and spewing blood each morning from asshole Trainers trying to "toughen you up." 

Speaking of assholes, a major one in the from of the tribute from Six had cornered me one morning, his eyes sunken and dark, like he knew the wolf hidden beneath my skin.  It's all convenience, really. He scratches my back and I'll watch his six, even as we're tossed into this fucking sorry excuse for a playpen. 

Rubber weapons, really?

What are we, four? 

”I’ll take the skinny guy with the bad attitude," the girl says, looking right at me. Huh, guess I should work on my people skills. Pops always said I needed to fix my face. But her, her stupid fucking rubber axe sails through the air just the same, leaving a bruise on top of another bruise that was nearly healed as it connects with my cheek. Dammnit. Guess I wasn't ever really known for my good looks, anyway.

Axyl tosses some bullshit about sewers and Two my way and I shrug it off. He's been talking shit for enough days that I'm surprised his eyes aren't brown with the color of it. He takes the kiss of the whip well, opting for the axe, instead, which leaves....

Among the pile of weapons on the floor, my gaze fixates upon the spiked blunt, drawn to it like a howl in the night. The spikes still speak a hint of danger, like the teeth of a friendly beast. I lift the weapon from its resting place, feeling the weight of its potential settle upon my shoulders, a cloak of possibility. The chain doesn't rattle, but as I swing it through the air, I feel the hum of a promise of cruelty. A strike for a strike. 

"Nice," I say more to myself than anyone else around us, my breath heavy in the silence before the strike.

"How 'bout we see how bad my attitude really is?"

m a r g u e r i t e

Ready or not (Uh-huh), here I come, you can't hide
Gonna find you and make you want me

Maggie watched the blood trickle from the boy’s arm as she tapped her whip back behind her.

When he spoke at last, she couldn’t help but purse her lips. Of course he would go for the obvious. District Two had been demoted in the eyes of the Capitol and though they had not lost their career status, the heavy handed message was that they were trash just as the other districts.

His blade glanced Maggie and she recoiled with a hiss.

It should’ve stung more – his words, not the blade – yet a Maggie had never grown up in the pampered condition of some of her fellow careers. The notion that one couldn’t achieve something, anything because of where they’d begun was silly to her. If her father could screw in lightbulbs as a janitor and give them a halfway decent life, then anyone could.

She’d always placed less emphasis on what a person did, and more on how they did it. Were they lazy? Or cruel? Did they look out for themselves, or their friends?

It was this that gave her comfort on the long nights in the shared quarters in the District Two compartment. She prided herself on reading people through all the noise. She cut through all the rabble and cleared away the stone to expose what was hiding.

Six appeared simple in the way boys like him looked – shorn head, dead eyes, certainty – someone who blustered through his misgivings until he succumbed to his injuries or overcame.

Perhaps she could teach him that there was virtue in self-discovery.

“Someone needs to clean it up or everyone else gets sick.” Maggie defended Two as though she was talking back to the girls who’d made fun of her father. “Making the water clean and taking care of trash is probably even more important than learning how to kill someone. Except maybe right about now.”

The self-righteousness oozes off of the two girls like noxious fumes and I'm about ready to vom.

True, they can hit just as good as they can wiggle their tongues. And the axe from the one girl who has her sights set on me fucking stings as it hits my torso. I would call it a lucky shot, but I don't think luck lives here. 

And we aren't in the arena yet. The shit-talking is just that... shit-talking. It means fucking nothing. So if Axyl wants to run his mouth, I'll let him. I'll inhale slowly because taking a shot to your liver with a fist is pretty damn bad, but with a rubber fucking axe, it nearly brings tears to my eyes. 

Too bad I've seen worse. Too bad that I've been worse.

"This was a waste of time. A fucking fishing expedition," I tell Axyl, sucking in air between my teeth as I spin the blunt in my hand. "I'm over it, dude."