public training sessions!!
Feb 22, 2020 11:57:07 GMT -5
Post by Arrows on Feb 22, 2020 11:57:07 GMT -5
Alexander ChastmenSince the beginning, I've existed as an epicenter of chaotic creation. The trail I leave behind me is of broken bones and shattered souls. I've watched the world cry beneath my foot and laughed as it crumbled. It isn't a demonic presence pressuring my pursuit of entropy, but merely my fascination with the fragmentation. Humans seem such stable beings, bound by flesh and carried by bone, but nothing is like the sensation of watching one break.
In the eyes of the world, I'm a child. Barely sixteen and swept up in the sweltering summer of my adolescent decay into adulthood. I should be throwing rocks in an empty field laughing as my voice fluctuates between pitches. I should be pining after the fickle followings of my heart, learning the hurt that follows lost love. By all means of my existence, I should be maturing and coming face to face with the questions which have captured the attention of novels for centuries.
But I'm not just a child, I never have been.
The boy who I stare at in the mirror adorned in a black shirt and shorts isn't some teenager looking for any form of illegal intoxication. No. He's the child who sat in the study scanning pages upon pages of combat techniques. The little leaf who floated during his first time in the training academy so quickly that his opponents were all defeated by lunch break. A prodigy of peril, a monster born for the purpose of obtaining a crown from atop a mountain of corpses. A career.
I don't think of what's to come much when the avox comes to claim me. I've been practicing for this very presentation for years. I can almost hear Papa's words echoing through the gym late at night when he'd keep me for hours extra all because I was half an inch off here or there. Yeah, fuck that. I don't need to think about something that's habitually ingrained into my body. My mind wanders elsewhere instead, tapering off of the elevator's tones.
I think of how every Hunger Games is told through the lens of a story. The characters that make up its chapters and the ways they impact its arc. There are the heroes, the Auroras and the Lexs and the Jacobs. There are the villains, the Circes and the Cynthias and Wendells. There are the tragic characters, the Kiritos and the Ikes the Ronans. Even the brilliant characters, the Patricias and the Elites and the Orions. They all impact the story in their own way. I already know which character I am.
I'm relieved when I'm finally summoned for my session because the anxiety in the waiting room is thick enough that I can slice it with my sword. I don't waste energy on angst, all my energy is flowing forward towards the future. Towards the shadows stalking in their viewing box from Olympus. The Gods and Goddesses crave a strong showing from their Demi-Gods and Demi-Goddesses, which is why I will feed their hunger in exchange for adoration. My power craves their praise. I squeeze Gala's hand lightly before entering Olympus' gates.
I don't introduce myself, they know who we all are. They want to know whether our names are worth remembering or not. I smile in this place, soak in the pressure of the room. It's not fake, I'm genuinely happy as I move the various dummies into place across the center. My next act isn't a surprise, they've seen me showing off with swords every day since I've arrived. So when I take two and a small knife, which I turn away from them briefly to hide, there's not shock value. Not yet at least.
Starting with a small semi-circle of inanimate dummies, the shower of scarlet begins in a swirling storm of steel. The dual blades spinning at such swift speeds can barely be seen, but their effects are blatant. Heads slicing clean off alongside of limbs cleanly, no, surgically severed falling to the floor until the white tile runs red entirely.
As the last head heaves itself clean from its host, I use its former stump as a launch pad into the air. A sword slices through the air freed from my hand to skewer the neck another dummy several yards away. When my body finishes its roll upon reaching the ground, the warm up is over. I'm sprinting, showing the full extend of my light weight speed. I'm not a strength prodigy, but a precision one. My heart roars and my blade echos its screams. One dummy dead by the pool, the next dead by the archery station. I'm covering distance fast while swerving in patterns to show my dodging abilities.
By the time my minutes remaining are practically zero, I bite back the taste of metal in my mouth and climb up a nearby rope course. Below my finale has been staged, one final animated dummy like the ones I was dodging stands at the base of the course. I fake a fall. I'm hurtling fast with my head towards the floor as my last sword falls with a crash to the floor, but not before it's done.
A rope has been cut.
My ankle has already been secured within it and suddenly I am swinging with my head first towards the sword-armed dummy. The last thing it sees is a glint of steel emerging from within my mouth just as my face slams into its'. The knife I hid earlier was in my mouth the entire time, waiting for this moment. Waiting to drive into this dummy's eye and splatter blood across my dangling body. I cut myself free smiling through the blood-like liquid soaking my face. I look to Olympus and proclaim myself to them, to my place in their story.
"I'm the villain."