insert tribute here. (geerntet) wrote in colosseum, @ 2013-12-13 22:35:00 |
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Of fucking course the next tribute he came across seemed to be One boy. Who else, with Angelus bearing not the backpack he’d snatched from the Cornucopia, but the one he’d won from Ritz’s limp body? Keeping one eye on the blonde, bulky figure in the distance, Angelus eased the pack off himself to get out the headlamp, a bottle of water and a snap of beef jerky. The headlamp he slipped over his fevered brow (some protection for his head was better than nothing, didn’t the face mask he was wearing to bear the brunt of the sandstorm show that?). The jerky he ate. If Angelus was going to die, he wanted to be at least somewhat satisfied before he did. He mixed a little of the water with a fistful of sand and smeared the paste over as much as the pack as he could.
Returned everything to his pack, slipped it over his shoulders and started off at a brisk walk, keeping as far away from One boy as he could. If his odds were good, One boy wouldn’t even notice him through the thick sheen of sand grazing the air. Still, when Angelus was close enough to the tribute to be certain that yes, it was definitely One boy, he shifted his weight so he was walking in the same direction, almost the same pace, but backwards. If One boy was going to notice him, he wanted to see it coming. He wouldn’t make the same mistake he had with Ritz.
Basil was still with the Fours. He hadn’t left them although he knew soon he would have to break their alliance even with the promises they had made. He liked them but he didn’t want to die at their hands. Still they were the least irritating of all the tributes and he wasn’t that worried about them killing him in his sleep, they would want to make when they killed him spectacular. So he was at least, still sleeping well. But now he was on a brief recon mission to see what was around. The Fours had gone off to do something else, they would meet up later, he wasn't worried.
And what was around was another tribute. He walked faster, almost running but still trying to conserve energy, he wasn’t sure which one it was, one of the boys from an outlying district, they all seemed the same. And he didn’t care about what district they were from. And he was walking backwards, like a moron. He picked up the knife in his pocket, this would have to be quick and when he was close enough, he threw it at the boy, aiming for his heart. Dumbass he thought.
Fuck. Angelus stumbled into a backwards run, eyes pinned onto the career striding towards him, fascinated in spite of the painful jerking of his heart. It didn’t seem real or right, that knife slicing through the sand-whipped air for him and he tried to get out of the way, he did, but too captivated, too slow -- it was in him, thudding into bone and reverberating through his whole body, tearing out a sob and flaying the left side of his chest raw.
When he looked down at himself there was a knife, no wild light or burns, just a knife sticking into his fucking flesh. That was his actual body. An actual knife. It splintered off into the sand where Dru’s neck was, her throat, her not human anymore face. There was a distant moment of satisfaction -- his bone was stronger than knife, that was good, knife was in him, that was bad-- but then it was gone, and so with it went the part of Angelus that answered to think things through. Knifes and axe and knife stub but it was the decent sized rock in pocket that he went for, filching it out with fingers that felt steady in that good way, and lobbing it at One boy’s face with a yell, hoarse from recent disuse, “5 bitch that way just came. SHE helped them kill your girl. Saw it.”
And then there was running, right way around, towards the green of the meadow that was danger, but not this danger. His lung felt like it was about to slip out of its skin and get squished but his chest was still closed (checked) and his feet were battering away only at sand, sand, Dru’s throat, sand, grass soon grass keep going towards food.
Basil wasn’t surprised when the knife stuck in the boy, he was however angry that it hadn’t gotten him anywhere to kill him. That’s what he had been trying to do, another tribute, but not another death. Is that why the Ones had only sent the canteens? Because Basil and Ritz had let them down?
The sand was picking up and he could barely hear the other tribute above the noise and it was becoming harder and harder to walk towards the boy from who the fuck cared. He had to get out of here, he realized, if he stayed in the sand storm, he would be done for. That he did know. While the other boy went the other way, Basil let out a loud scream of frustration as the other boy slipped away and he was forced to head back to his camp.
He would think on what that dumb ass had said there.