Top Four: Ramsey Robichaux v. Caspian Black

He stared over the edge of the ship, gritted teeth and scowled brow. Fucking bitch Fucking bitch Fucking bitch Fucking bitch Fucking- at least the sharks took their time with her. He watched for a very long time, hand gripping the railing so hard that his fingernails left impressions in the wood, his expression tight but ambivalent. The water turned white with the froth of their excitement and then pink with the beginnings of her blood and then briefly crimson. He saw a flash of something- an arm, he thought- and then the water faded back to its murky beginnings and the sharks began circling for more.

He blinked. He inhaled. He blinked. He exhaled.

He didn't understand how her plan made any sense. I'm not fish food. I'm feeding myself to fish. He thought he was decidedly annoyed by it after some deliberation, but ultimately:

"I'm still fucking counting that!" he called at long last.

He had, after all, planned on throwing her over the edge and feeding her to the very sharks until she'd fed herself to  them. It was certainly less theatrical than his own plans, but he supposed it was better than nothing.

He walked over to his hand, now covered in Grub's vomit and bits of dried grass and water and it looked completely fucking disgusting, but he used it to wave to the crowd as he felt his ship began to move. By the time he made it to the side of the arena, he could already tell that something was changing. The sharks seemed more unified, less chaotic- less like the pets he had so come to love. But the moment he realized this was purely performative, he spent the rest of his time with eyes on the crowd. Coincidentally, he had a clear view of the victors in their perch. He made eye contact with Adder, and for the first time the pieces clicked into place. That girl he'd murdered while he was hanging upside down looked like a less-severe, less-impressive, clearly worse-at-surviving version of Panem's first victor. He'd just caved in the face of Adder's little sister.

If her stare said anything, it was that she hated him. He turned so that his back was to her for a moment, and when he turned back, he held his severed hand up again. All the fingers pardon the middle one had been bent down so that he flipped her off. He laughed, put his hand into his hat and then put his hat back on his head.

He guessed he'd have to deal with that later, which was exciting if nothing else.

When the ships began to move again, they were moving toward one another. He squinted to see if there was anyone on the ship nearest to him. And like, yes, but... he definitely hadn't made it through his fight quite as in-tact as Ramsey had.

Ramsey raised an eyebrow.

"Is that it?"

If he had to guess, a strong gust of wind could have finished this guy off. He looked to be younger, or maybe just shorter, or maybe just deader. As their ships closed in on one another, Ramsey made eye contact with him, made a kissing motion with his mouth.

"I'm coming to get ya!" he called. He paced up and down the hull, waiting for his chance, waiting to take another life.

Oh.

Oh.

This boy wasn't just close to death. This boy knew he was close to death. He was afraid; Ramsey could smell it on him even from here. It made his mouth water and his pupils dilate: a shark smelling blood in the water.

Maybe he could wait it out, force the little fucker to try his luck, force him to walk the plank over here. Ramsey guessed it could have been as easy as shaking the damn thing with him on it and the fall would've been the strike to end it. But no, he had no loyalty to this ship: he'd already conquered it. This was another for him to claim as his own. Ramsey Robichaux: the Taker. The hungry. The fed.

He yipped, scuffling his boots forward along the waxed floors. The second the gangplank locked into position, he was surging across, his axe haphazardly held up over his head as he tried to go quickly without toppling over the edge. How embarrassing would that have been? The crowd held their breath. They craved to see the violent pictures Ramsey Robichaux wanted to paint for them. His axe a brush, he leapt aboard the enemy ship in a huff, bent knees locking themselves into place so that the numb cold feeling he felt in both of his feet wouldn't show.

He was still losing too much blood from his hand. Part of him considered taking it out from under his hat and shoving it into the stump to staunch the bleeding, but he figured if there was any chance of him getting it sewn back on in a couple hours after the fuckin Grub's vomit and the uh... trial mandated separation, he needed to do as little as possible to keep his chances good.

Worse came to worse, all the best pirates had hook hands.

"I tell you what," Ramsey said, grip tightening on the axe resting against his shoulder. He spat a ball of phlegm onto the ship's hull.

"You play nice, and I won't make you suffer."

He was, at his very core, a man who thought himself too good for a fair deal. Besides, if this kid played nice or even if he didn't, Ramsey had no obligation to actually keep up his side of the deal. The first rule of war, baby: There are no rules.

He sighed, almost disappointed, actually. Listen, he was at the top of the food chain, and in order to understand him, you would have also had to be at the top, and most people never would be. You know why? Because none of them had the nerve, or the fortitude, or the stomach. Climbing was a chore, for fuck's sake. Ramsey didn't reach the peak by taking the easy meal- gazelle only ever interested him when they were firmly rooted enough in their own delusions of safety to be actually surprised when they realized his teeth at their throat was the reason they couldn't breathe anymore. He went for the big fish- ha- because they fed him longer and always proved to be more of a challenge.

This boy was a big enough fish, Ramsey guessed. Maybe not a good fighter, but a good survivor at the very least. Well, good enough to make it this far. Not good enough to go any further, alas. Ramsey sucked at his teeth, tutted his tongue.

"Well, I was going to!" And he would have, if the little shit hadn't let himself think on instinct. Ramsey didn't see what the problem was. As far as deaths went, a severed head was about the most painless way to go out. Well, to go out violently, anyway. Clean cut from the back, at the very least hard enough to break through the spine and that was it: lights out. He wouldn't have even known to say the word ow before he was gone. It was, Ramsey thought, a much better way of going out than, say, being hung over a pit of starving sharks. If he played his cards right, Ramsey might just have still let him get by with something like a stab to the heart- not quite as instantaneous, but not torturous by any means.

"Fuck you, man!"

He was too annoyed to notice the boy's balled fist slamming into his groin.

"Ga-AHH FUCK!"

He coughed, long and dry, felt his throat constrict and constrict until the cough was a gag and there wasn't enough room for breath. His stomach, he was surprised to learn, hurt more than the parts themselves. It was the most intense nausea he'd ever felt- and that's coming from someone who had experienced alcohol poisoning three separate times back when he was first trying to make his own moonshine. He doubled over and- combined with the numbness from the blood loss- it was just enough to pull him down onto his knees.

"Are you fucking KIDDING ME?" The words likely weren't entirely coherent toward the end, because they were taken over by a sheer scream of frustration. Spit dribbled from his mouth, his face turned a sickly mixture of red and green, his very eyes seemed to vibrate with rage. He slammed his fist into the wooden planks, forced himself to catch his breath. Nothing was happening.

Something should have been happening. It was a fucking cheap shot, but part of Ramsey thought he might have done something similar if he were as desperate. Only problem is he would've taken advantage of the moment, used that window to regain the upper hand. But nothing was happening.

He flashed a grin, all teeth and no warmth. Not an inch of compassion; he'd squeezed any trace of that out when he'd caved in Baby Adder's skull. This boy was already dead; his brain just hadn't caught up with the rest of his body yet.

"Alright," he allowed a pause. If he had a cigar, he would've taken a drag off it in that moment. Damn- he really wished he had a cigar. "Suffering it is."

An instant later, Ramsey's fist slammed into the boy's nose so hard that the crack sounded artificial. His knuckles erupted in pain and when he pulled them back, there was a mixture of the boy's blood and his own lined across them. The boy staggered, so Ramsey grabbed him by the shirt collar and sent him crashing to his ass. He sniffled, fixed his sleeves as he took his time closing the distance between them again. He picked his axe back up, swung it around a couple times so that the boy would do exactly what Ramsey wanted him to. Sure enough, as Ramsey rared back, holding it almost like a baseball bat, the boy held his only remaining hand up in defense. One fell swoop, and the boy's other hand was skittering across the surface, sliding so far that it made a thudding noise against the rail once it slammed into it.

"And now you have no way of stopping me."

Ramsey grinned again and he wanted it to be as cold as it had been before but, god damn it, this was shaping up to be a purely inspired kill after all. He slammed his knee into the boy's chin, saw it as it snapped back and took his center of gravity from him completely. Ramsey dropped down to his knees, the boy's struggling torso beneath him.

Now, this was funny.

"I'm gonna strangle you to death," he said. The boy couldn't stop him, because then his stumps would hurt more. He smeared the letter R onto the boy's forehead twice in blood, gave him a brisk pat or two on the cheek, and then closed his hand around the boy's throat. And he squeezed. And he squeezed. And he squeezed. Until the parts of the face that weren't already turned purple, and the eyes bulged, and then faded, and then went blank. Ramsey squeezed until he felt things popping beneath his grasp, his own mouth wide open and straining. He realized he'd been holding his own breath the entire time, so when he exhaled, it was in a hyena's laugh.

At last he rolled off of the boy and stared up at the open sky above him.

He had found his calling, and they all knew it. They all loved him for being exactly who he was. They all feared him for what he could become. He could feel it all as it poured onto him and he drank, and he drank, and he would continue until he had his fill.