The thread in which Dante becomes Stark's Bish

The thread in which Dante becomes Stark's Bish Jun 6, 2012 22:18:08 GMT -5

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Post by aya on Jun 6, 2012 22:18:08 GMT -5

Cut me down like the trees
Like the lumber or weeds
Drag me out of the sea
And then teach me to breathe

Stark Harper —

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Hunting had been mildly productive for Stark; while she had a few new scrapes, they were nothing serious, and they paled in comparison to her swollen ego. She'd made her first kill. Her icy heart still pumped epinephrine through her system, her eyes darting from place to place as she scanned the tropical flora that surrounded her. She didn't know what she was looking for, whether she scanned her surroundings for food or for targets or even for the poisonous threats that no doubt lurked in this tropical climate; everything was so instinctual that a very minimal amount of legitimate deep thought ever crossed her mind.

After perhaps an hour of finding nothing, Stark happened upon a jagged stream that cut through the trees and stopped to fill her water jug. There were a handful of interesting looking fish in the stream, and she wasn't doing anything else, so she pulled the fishing net out of her bag and attempted to snare one.

[dice=12]
[one fish]

She caught a vivid green one about the size of her foot, delicately plucking it from the net and gripping it firmly in her right hand. In a way, the fish in the stream — and the one in her hand — were like much like the tributes that accompanied her in the tropical arena: weak, purposeless, and struggling against the inevitable. The fish would be caught, the tributes would be caught; the fish would struggle, the tributes would fight; Stark would crush them both. The fish gave a mighty wiggle and flopped out of her hand, but she snatched it out of the air, as she had done with the last wax bird in her training session. Pathetic, the way that it even tried to defy her. She broke its neck with one hand; with a crack like miniature cannon fire, it ceased to live and became still. She rolled it up in a leaf and stuck it in her rucksack, rising to leave.

Not bothering to be stealthy, she pried some fronds from a palmetto bush and quickly set to work lighting them on fire. She didn't care if it ended up drawing all the tributes in her area; let them come. They'd all run away so far, she wanted them to come. She could take each and every one of them. Alas, no tributes seemed to take her up on the challenge. So she boiled her water — because Stark Harper was no dummy and was not about to get parasites like some of the stupid careers that the past decade had seen — and cooked her fish before meandering away from the area.

After awhile, she came upon a little main-made clearing, where she could see a figure milling around. A sitting duck. How lovely. She grabbed her hook and pushed through the underbrush, where she saw none other than a badly chewed up Dante Ramadar pointing a pike at her with his non-dominant hand — the other one looked just a little bit mangled.

Stark couldn't help it; she cackled at the sight of the big obnoxious meathead from training looking more like a blob of ground beef. It took her more than a minute to gain her composure; there were tears streaming out of her eyes from how hard she was cracking up. At a long last she sighed dismissively, shaking her head at the hilarity in front of her. When she regained the power of speech, she waved her non-dominant hand dismissively and announced "Oh, this is precious." She used her hook to push his pike out of the way and strutted past him into the clearing.

"So it looks like that suckerpunching tactic worked out great for you in the bloodbath, huh?" she snarked at him, shaking her head. Served him right. Flashing a wicked grin, she asked "Why don't I put you down like a horse right now, Cyclops? Put you out of your misery?" Stark could've asked herself the same question. Why hadn't she just destroyed the already-wounded District Two? Perhaps it had been because he was vulnerable as it was. He was clearly wounded, and Stark took sadistic pleasure in seeing him that way. Besides, he hadn't tried to skewer her while she spent the first minute or so of their encounter cracking up at his weakened state. For the time being, it wouldn't hurt her to have an ally that was either a competent fighter or a good punching bag — and she knew that with Cyclops, she had both.

"So we're teaming up, I suppose," she told him, knowing full well that she'd turn on him in a second if she had to, and that he'd do the same to her. That was how the vast majority of careers operated; most of the successful ones did, anyhow. (She scowled briefly at the thought of her mentor.) "But you're not useful to me if you can't fight, so get yourself fixed up. Here —" she took the satchel off of her shoulder, the one that she took from the girl she'd killed "— I got you a present. It's a purse, see? Perfect for a little girl — such as yourself — that can't take a few hits in the bloodbath."

She dug through her own rucksack and handed him a pair of pliers — they added unnecessary weight to her already-full pack, though he needed something to weigh his empty purse down a bit — and then pulled out the eyepatch that she'd plucked out of the sand during the bloodbath. "Aha! Just for you, Cyclops."

Finally, she extracted the District 11 boy's whip, a cruel grin crossing her face. "Ready to be my pack mule?" She wasn't one for sparing feelings, but it certainly sounded a lot nicer than being blunt with him. In truth, what she should've told the District Two boy was Congratulations, you are officially my bitch.

[acquires water, catches fish, makes a fire, obtains firewood, boils water. Uses her first aid from the BB on Cyclops Ramadar. Gives him the satchel she took from Chole, as well as her eyepatch and pliers. Makes him her bitch.]

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