make or break [.dan & tiger & jem.]

Dan had been sulking by the combat dummies for perhaps half an hour, occasionally tracing over weak spots with a stiletto. The thin dagger slid through flesh (or latex, as it were) as if it were frosting. Heart. Heart. Lung. Liver. Aorta. Carotid. Femoral. Femoral. Temple. He even slid the tiny steel into the corner of its eye, tickling the brain — but he couldn't bring himself to draw the blade sideways for a full, clean gouge. Hit too close to home.

This was the closest he'd come to actually training since target practice with Jem, and anyone who knew anything about combat that knowing how to point a slingshot would get you fuck-nowhere but dead. It wasn't super hard to find the weak spots — you didn't even need to know where they ought to be; it was easy enough to guess. Anywhere guarded was a good clue: the pale undersides of limbs, the organs encased in bone. And anywhere two important pieces met: joints were vulnerable to an easy up-fucking, leaving the tribute in question hobbled for the rest of their short, short life; the neck, the bottom of the ribcage. The eyes.

Bored after five minutes, he stuck the kneedle of a knife up the dummy's nose and left it there. He put his elbow up on its shoulder, leaning on it the way that close friends would (if Dan had any) and taking stock of the training center around him. Intimidated off of the blades floor — or perhaps tired of embarrassing themselves, a flock of lower-districts had taken up residence around the firemaking station, trying to coax embers out of wood but not getting much more than a face full of smoke. Don't bother with the fire, rabbits, he mused, one eyebrow raised in cruel pleasure, it'll only lead me to you. It would be so easy to cut them down, a handful of idiots around a cookfire. Just a few easy slices, and they'd be squealing like his grandmother when —

A sudden "Heads up Cowboy!" pulled him from his fantasies. One broad hand shot up to catch the flying steel before he even realized that his district parter had lobbed a longsword at him. His fist closed around the hilt as if it was meant to be there, and instinctively, he whirled around, bringing it up to lop the head off of the dummy he'd spent the last ten minutes making friends with. Well, sort of — the blade had been a touch heavier than he'd anticipated, and so the cowboy hadn't brought it up quite high enough. Instead of just the head, Dan had sheared the dummy right in half, a clean diagonal line from hip to shoulder. He buried the point in its neck as it fell to the ground with a thud.

For a brief moment, he stood there in silence, admiring his work. Then, with a shrug, he casually kicked over its bottom half, which toppled over in the other direction. "Good toss."