The Bloodbath

He topples, and you dig your knife into his gut and twist, just to be sure. Artery oozing, the stuck pig was not bound to be long for this world. You're not even sure if the second stab did anything to hasten his death, but you are sure that getting stabbed in the stomach is excruciating, and you are sure that you owe him that much on behalf of your father, your sisters, your siblings in arms. The living. The dead. The left behind.

You wipe the blood on off of your knife and onto the hem of your shirt, the scarlet stripe dyeing a new pattern across the checked plaid. You think you got it from Gadsden. The habit and the flannel. Someone else might take a moment to think about what they've done, but you're past the point of shedding a tear for a comrade, you don't have a thought to spare for the quisling corpse at your feet. You don't know how many of those you've made the last few years. Too many to tally. Not enough to count.

You pause for a moment, glancing around. It's a micro-scale version of the last few years of your life, playing out like a theatrical interpretation. Several small skirmishes have broken out between the kids on the field around you. Some might be Capitol sympathizers, turncoats and traitors like the body at your feet, getting what's been coming to them. Some might be infighting. From a distance, it's impossible to tell. Everyone else looks on at the bloodshed, content to twiddle their thumbs in distress. The enemy stands at the sidelines, armored but not impervious, ignored and invisible.

And — as always — you seem to be the only one getting anything done.

With a sigh, you cut the sleeve from your left shoulder, hold your knife between your teeth, and tie it in a knot over the wound. It is the freshest, but it is not alone. Bruises and battle scars and bullet wounds decorate your bare skin, the only medals of valor afforded to a rebel soldier. Crimson highlights each crudely-stitched crevice: the place where they'd run out of sutures and Commander unwound the stitching of her jacket to fix you up, the time you'd been shot and pinned under enemy fire for two days and nights all on your own and needed to cauterize the wound with the gunpowder dumped out of your last shotgun shell, the jagged line from when you'd cut your wrist falling out of a tree and hid it for a week because you were too afraid to tell your mother.

The interceder is in a bad way, a thumb pared from her hand, wide-eyed and still pleading false equivalencies with the boy in the glasses. "This isn't liberation, this is an execution. And you're doing all the dirty work for them."

What do you call the executioner of executioners? Liberator.

You've never lived in a world of timid, submissive idealism. Those who ask politely for incremental progress and mutter nervously at the notion of radical change have only ever stood in your way. Still, like any good revolutionary, you know how to prioritize. This girl may wail and languish while the seed of change grows fast in the field around her, but she is not your enemy while those who reap stand within your reach.

"Hey!" You whistle at the trained soldiers that flank her. The girl in combat stance with the expert tuck-and-roll. The boy with the bloodthirsty grin and the fleck of blood on his glasses. The big dude who tripped into the turf swinging his knife at a small kid. "Hey you! Somersault, Spectacles, Faceplant —" You point your knife at the perimeter of peackeepers, looking down the blade like the sight of a double-barrel. In your head they fall like dominoes, big red dots blown through the middle. "Bigger blocks to cut over there." Teach used to laugh at your District-Twoisms and supply an idiom from her home in return. "Bigger fish to fry. More pigs to stick."

Now that you've killed the Capitol collaborator, their soldiers are your next target.

Lest anyone mistake you for some violent psychopath, relishing in the opportunity to bathe yourself in blood regardless of who it belongs to, you clarify: "Peacekeepers to kill." Clear communication saves lives. And ends others, you suppose.

Charging down the field, a curiosity catches the corner of your eye. One of them, grimy whites unmistakable, carries a girl in a hospital gown over his shoulder. Had she tried to escape? Good for her. Maybe she'll tell you how she did it. Maybe she can do it again. Forcing a peacekeeper out onto the field like this — now that's praxis.

The middle of the confused throng is a dangerous place for a peacekeeper, surrounded by children with knives who've lost everything under the crush of the Capitol. Children who've never been able to choose a side until all their choices have been stripped from them, children who dreamed themselves martyrs but never had the courage to die for a cause while they still had the privilege of pretending the war would never reach them. Backed into a corner, a coward may find that the thing connecting their hips and shoulders is a spine.

Maybe he hears you. Maybe he senses the precariousness of being separated from the others of his ilk. He starts stripping down to his briefs. This camouflage might have been enough to throw the others off his scent, but you've seen what he is.

Jogging to catch him, brandishing your knife, you make your presence and your allegiance known.

"You don't want to know how many white coats I've turned red," you hiss, taking a cut at him, "Capitol pig."

[attacks elmo with knife]
GYTZe9rKgMknife
[2116 -- Deep Gash on Forehead -- 9.0 damage]

Post Key
interceder — devon
somersault — alicia
spectacles — johannes
faceplant — anapos
peacekeeper — elmo
praxis — :wink: