thearena | closed.

The scientist has been biding his time, following at an almost leisurely pace the trail of blood left both by the other man's kills and by the damage the man himself has taken. He waits and watches as Aunamee picks off their competition. First one. Then another. How many tributes could be left? Not many. And at this rate, Aunamee would die before he himself had a chance to end the man.

That just wouldn't do.

Stashing his harpoon in a nearby crevasse, he finally seeks to close the distance between them.

He doesn't notice. Not Grey, not the trail of blood he leaves behind, not the crevasse he passes on his way through the snow. His neurons are tangled up in cold and pain, his thoughts nearly as blurry as the snowy landscape stretching out before him. Aunamee was once a man who had the entire world cracked open like a book on his lap, and a part of him still spins with the denial of it all. He knows what he is doing. He knows where he is going.

He knows that he never loses.

His objective is to find a crevasse, to hug those icy walls until his pain no longer feels like pain. This is what he thinks about, again and again, his mind on an endless loop as he limps and struggles through the snow.

And then, when Grey is only yards away, he sees him.

The scientist's nose is badly frostbitten and he's certainly on the malnourished side, sporting an injury near his neck that appears to be healing over without mishap.

His mind is as clear as ever.

Grey waits until he's close enough to Aunamee to speak, holding up his hands in a gesture of harmlessness and to show he holds no weapons. "...The arena hasn't been particularly kind to you, has it?" He asks, looking Aunamee up and down. He has to suppress a laugh.

His right hand falls near the pocket holding the folding-knife. Ready.

Aunamee raises his hands, too -- in defense, in surrender, he doesn't know. He cannot recognize Grey. The stranger he attacked (and who attacked him) sticks in his memory as a faceless phantom with a harpoon. Fear ruined those moments. Fear muted every feature of the man who now stands before him.

"What do you want?"

He knows how weak he must look.

Edited 2013-02-14 17:57 (UTC)

Grey shrugs. "It tends to be easier to get to the end of these things if you join up with others for a while, it seems." Unless you play them smart, like him, of course.

The dark glasses hide a look of pure merriment at exactly that. At how weak Aunamee looks. How weak he sounds. Beaten. Ready to be finished.

He doesn't trust this man. Not the way he stands. Not the way he shrugs. It's too late in the game for allies, he figures (which is why he had to eliminate howard, poor howard), and even if it weren't, few people would approach a limping, stumbling man in the snow with the idea he would help them win.

He pictures slitting Grey's throat with a hunting knife, the blood catching on his shoes. He pictures gurgles and screams and worn down energy -- but then his own pain kicks him in the gut and his stomach twists and turns. He suppresses a shudder, his teeth clenched hard.

"Shelter," he says finally, pulling the word from his throat. "Take me to shelter and I will see about being your ally."

Shelter, where his body can live forever.

Grey smiles, though there's something off about it. Something that should never be in a smile. "Of course. I passed some not far back." Turning back the way he came, he glances over his shoulder to indicate that Aunamee should follow before beginning back in that direction.

It was almost too perfect. Almost going too according to plan. He'd not even needed to coax the other man towards the crevasse. Aunamee had practically invited himself to his death.

There is something wrong with this man. There is something primal in his smile, a fox with razor sharp teeth.

Yet he follows.

He leaves enough distance so that he can run if necessary, his denial telling him that he can make it even with two bad legs. His foot lists on the ground, his boot leaving stretched footprints in the snow. In the crevice, he can fight. He can tear this man's arms out of his sockets and cut ribbons in his chest. He can handle an ambush. He can handle anything.

Edited 2013-02-14 19:13 (UTC)

It isn't terribly far off.

If you aren't making your way through sub zero temperatures across a glacier whipped by frozen snow on bitter winds.

If you aren't encumbered by mortal wounds and severe blood loss.

Grey cuts across the glacier as easily as one can with the help of the crampons, the extra thick snow gloves still serving their purpose in protecting his right hand from the worst of the frostbite. Approaching the crevasse, he estimates the location of where he'd hidden the harpoon and attempts to overshoot it slightly. Better that Aunamee doesn't see it immediately.

Aunamee doesn't realize how weak he became until he follows Grey into the crevice.

Sure, he knew he was lagging behind. He knew that now and again, little specs of grey would flutter and dance into his vision, that his limbs were trembling, that his stomach and his leg had been bleeding non-stop for the last forty minutes. He knew that he could no longer feel his foot. Maybe it was because his thoughts were blurry or maybe it was because he was so singularly focused on finding shelter, but the gravity of the situation doesn't hit him until the crevice envelops his head and his full strength comes surging back. Why couldn't he move like this before? Why had it been so difficult to breathe? To think?

Was he bleeding to death?

The thought grips his mind with white hot terror. No, dying was for people like screaming Howard or the woman under his boot, for weak biological flames in frail biological candles, for the man in front of him who he could now see so clearly--

(He is eighteen years old and wearing a shirt that is so white, so clean, and he is stepping down stairs in a house he's never been to but has seen a thousand times. He is here to collect someone, he is here to fetch a boy whose life and death he owns, but there is another boy there with wild eyes and a whirling drill. Aunamee snaps his bones so easily, so effortlessly, and forces the boy to bring the drill to his own chest--

And then this boy is older, this boy is a man kicking up snow with his boots, this boy is a man who laughs and laughs and laughs, this boy is a man with a harpoon. And then--

Blood. Quiet. Darkness. )

Inside the crevice, Aunamee fakes the limp, but he does not fake the tremor that runs up and down his entire body. He snakes his hand to the pocket of his jacket. Out comes the fishing line. He pulls it tight, so tight, and then he leaps at Grey from behind, aiming to curl the cruel cord around his neck.

Edited 2013-02-16 18:54 (UTC)

It isn't that he'd taken his attention off of Aunamee as he'd stepped along the narrow passage that was the deep, wound-like crack within the glacier. That much would be foolish. It's that he hadn't expected such strength. Impossible, unfeasible strength from a man half dead only moments ago.

He feels the fishing line come across the front of his throat, the thin wire cutting in, but he manages to bring his left hand up before the other man can wrap it fully around, the line slicing into the fabric of his glove.

“Well, well, sounds like interesting things are happening down here, hmm?”

This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

The block is something he expected, something he could see, but when he tries to compensate for it, he collides with the icy wall, his shoulder connecting roughly with the unforgiving surface. He tries to use the close quarters to his advantage, to press his body against the ice for leverage as he tugs the cord tighter and tighter, aiming to draw Grey in like a spider would. Tiny little fly. Come here, come here.

"Alastor," he hisses.

He shoots out a kick towards his knee.

But Grey forces back against the wire with his hand, trying to force it away from his exposed throat. He finds it surprisingly easy to do so. A grin spreads it's way across his face like wildfire as realization dawns. The limits on his arm have been lifted.

His elation is short lived, the name Aunamee utters confirming that he isn't the only one who's had the limits on their abilities lifted. Eyes first widening in terror, the name itself shortly ignites the flame of rage. "Told you... not... to call me that!" The scientist snarls, one leg nearly buckling under the other man's kick as he returns the favor with his other foot, the crampon's blades like teeth searching for flesh.

Grey's metal arm (new, powerful, are those the same bones he snapped fifteen years ago?) proves too powerful for a tug of war. The metal cuts, tears into his gloves, and he releases it, the cord whipping down to the ground. It is still attached to the spool in his pocket, but there are other, more pressing matters to attend to.

The future is pulsing in his head, images ghosting out from other images, possibilities erupting into new possibilities like trees or veins. He sees the kick coming, but again, the narrow space works against him. He is aware of the pressure, but not the pain, as the metal blades pound into his skin, impaling muscles, scraping bone.

He is better than pain. He is beyond pain.

Edited 2013-02-16 22:32 (UTC)

He uses the crampon's grip on Aunamee's leg to shove himself forward, to give himself the little space necessary to twist around to face his enemy. Teeth pull at the glove of his left hand as he comes to face the psychic, slipping it off to reveal the metal beneath, and a short, high-pitched laugh escapes him as he reaches for the other man's throat.

It was over. Aunamee couldn't possibly dodge in the tight confines of the crevasse. He could already hear the wet crunch of flesh and cartilage.

The flesh crunches. The cartilage crunches. Aunamee's breathing quickly falls to rattling gurgles because he is unable to dodge, unable to escape, and he kicks his legs against the wall behind him in a futile attempt at both. He is dying. He is going to die.

(Blood. Quiet. Darkness.)

But he is too good for death.

When he lifts his hands, they tremble and jerk and twitch as one would expect, but as his airway closes completely and his gasps disappear, they keep moving. They have a goal. A purpose.

His hunting knife.

His movements speed up all at once. His hands quit trembling, his legs find solid ground. Aunamee tears the knife from his pocket with the strength of a far healthier man and jabs it forward into the other man's stomach.

Somewhere during the struggle, the scientist's dark glasses have fallen off, wild heterochromatic eyes locked on piercing grey, a rictus grin splitting his face near in two as he presses the other man into the icy wall, crushes him. This time, this time...

He feels the pressure before the pain, a foreign object where it doesn't belong, and his grin falters, the fire in his eyes dies just that little bit before he looks down to find the hunting knife buried in his gut.

Aunamee should be dead. Aunamee should be dead.

The pain is like an explosion that grips him from head to toe, finding it's center where the knife enters his body. Sucking frigid air between his teeth, he redirects his deadly grip, now for the wrist that holds the unseen weapon.

The whites of Aunamee's eyes are now a fiery scarlet. His lips are cracked, blue. When Grey releases his neck, the muscles remain crushed, holding up his head as though it were an hour glass. His wrist snaps under the pressure of the metal arm, but his fingers remain improbably locked around the knife's handle. He pushes the blade deeper. Harder.

And he laughs.

It's not immediately obvious as a laugh. With his throat crushed, it sounds more like a series of whistles, some wet with blood, others rattling like the cries of a summer cicada. He laughs because he always wins, because Grey will be dead soon and it will take a long time, because everything about the other man's fear is perfect.

Or maybe he laughs because he's scared out of his mind, because whenever he tries to look into his own future, he sees nothing but darkness. It's a twitching hysteria that soon escapes into his smile, his movements, his grotesquely exposed eyeballs. He throws his other arm up with all that unbalanced mania and reaches for Grey's face with his thumb and index finger.

He reaches for his eyes.

Choking as he feels the knife sink deeper into his stomach, Grey wrenches Aunamee's arm back by the grip he has on the man's wrist, gasping as the blade slides free. He stares at Aunamee in a state of wonder and disbelief for a moment, disassociated, as the other man continues to function, continues to live.

Aunamee should be dead.

The scientist's head jerks back until it's pressed against the other wall of the crevasse, eyes flying wide with terror as reality comes slamming back into being. His own right hand flies up to intercept the grab, even as his left hand creeps up further on the psychic's arm, starts to pull, to rip it away from the man's body.

It takes him a moment to realize that the hysteria filled laughter echoing up and down the narrow crevasse is coming from himself.

Look at his fear.

Aunamee's arm cracks and disconnects from his shoulder with a sickening squelch. The blood that comes, oh, the blood is torrential. Aunamee feels it on his face, his torso, his feet, but the one thing he never feels is the pain because he is too good for the pain, he will always be too good for the pain. While his organs perish one by one, his power holds each one up with invisible crutches and pumps his veins with something far more dignified than dirty, messy blood. Dignified like he is dignified. Perfect like he is perfect.

Look at his fear.

Nothing keeps Aunamee's beet red eyes from lighting up with delight as Grey sinks into the wall behind him. Around them, the glacier hums and crackles and cries (too loudly, perhaps, too much), but Aunamee's mind floods with the other man's panicked thoughts. This is good, because this man deserves to suffer for lying to him, for tricking him, for bringing him down into this crevice and thinking he could win.

For killing him.

Look at his fear.

There is nothing left inside Aunamee but the rage. He shoots a knee up into Grey's gut, his wound. He pitches his head forward, perfect white teeth tearing at Grey's neck.

He gives a sharp yell of pain, head snapping back to crack against the ice behind, as Aunamee's knee slams up into the stab wound in his gut. The scientist bucks, shrieking as the other man's teeth sink into the flesh of his neck, ripping, tearing at it like an animal. He brings the severed arm in his hand up, and drives the knife still clutched in it's vice-like grip into the side of Aunamee's neck, mindless of the close proximity to his own face as he attempts to decapitate the other man.

Grey's thoughts are an uncontrollable and repetitive rush.

Why won't he die
Why won't he die
Why won't he die
Why won't he die

Edited 2013-02-17 18:29 (UTC)

But the same invisible structures that hold Aunamee's organs in place keep his brain connected to every. single. muscle.

Every finger on his severed arm abruptly loosens, the muscles flexing and stretching, the knife falling from its grip and remaining embedded in his improbably squeezed neck. The bones in his broken wrist gnash and scrrrrrrrape as the disconnected fingers on the disconnected hand grasp blindly for the handle. He is going to take this out of his neck and then he is going to shove it into Grey's because it is time he put him out of his misery, it is time that he shut up those thoughts, it is time that this whole fucking thing just ended --

-- but that is not what the future looks like. For a moment, genuine fear (real fear, not glee marred with hysteria, not anger) flashes in Aunamee's eyes.

The ice around them moans.

Then starts to crumble.

Edited (obviously can't make up my mind) 2013-02-17 19:36 (UTC)

He hears the impossibly loud crack that seems to echo forever. He hears the moan of tons of ice shifting. The sea birds abandoning their nesting area near the edge. And he moves.

Dropping the severed arm, he twists frantically around in the narrow space, the fingers of his left hand sinking into the ice formerly behind him. The wall up to the side facing away from the ocean. He begins to scale it, the crampons biting easily into the thick ice. He would live and Aunamee would die.

Die, die, die.

The wall behind Aunamee shifts, giving way inch by inch, foot by foot, sprinkles of snow cascading down on his head like pleasant little flurries. The ice underneath his feet buckles, then begins to float towards the crumbling wall. Towards the ocean. Visions of the future run forwards, then backwards, forwards, then backwards, as though they were snagged on something that wouldn't let them go any further.

(No no no no no no no.)

He grabs for Grey's leg, one last desperate attempt, before the wall behind him crashes down completely, spreading sunlight on his back, making the crevice no longer a crevice. His power winks out -- in more ways than one. He crumples into the ocean, dead before he even falls.

Grey climbs up the opposite side of the crevice, not even daring to look over his shoulder to watch the other side collapse, to watch Aunamee fall to his death. Only after he's scrambled over the edge onto solid ground does he look, look to find nothing. And then he hears the echo of the cannon.

Rolling over onto his back he starts to laugh, and oh it hurts, it hurts so much. But he can't stop it, doesn't care to, and it only grows as he bleeds out onto the ice.

Aunamee is dead.

It was Dora all over again. The vision of her, pale and beautiful, dead and terrible, merged with that of Howard, young and alive, cold and blue, in his mind. His purpose, like those days on Kenedy's trail, haven narrowed down to a single focus.

He lost the trail once. Twice. But determinedly scented it out again, doggedly remaining on the heels of Howard's killer.

He paused at the new set of tracks, studied how the moved together, one after the other, a quiet warning humming in the back of his head.

But he didn't let it deter him.

Justice would be done.

He followed the new set slowly. Carefully. His knife out and ready.

Across the snow, flecks of blood like black breadcrumbs leading to a sheer cliff's edge. To a coppery sea of red. To Grey, floating in the center.

Edited 2013-02-18 00:32 (UTC)

By the time Wyatt arrives the scientist's laughter has trailed off into silence. Blood pools at his right side, already soaking the entire front of his parka where the knife had entered, and his neck has been torn into a bloody mess. The man's breathing is growing labored and he shivers almost violently.

Grey turns his head towards the sound of approaching boots, wincing at the pull it causes on his ruined neck. He doesn't recognize Wyatt. Not yet. But just the same, relief floods him at the sight of the other tribute. A faster death was oh, so very welcome.

Wyatt approached warily, with slow, measured steps.

That much blood, those ragged breaths, the small uncertain movement... he didn't expect the doctor to be a threat.

But where was the other? Was he waiting, using Grey as a distraction? Bait?

"Where is he?" Wyatt asked, stopping just out of reach. Staring down into Grey's pale, ashen face. "The one you were with, where's he at?"

Edited 2013-02-18 11:38 (UTC)

He as he comes to recognize Wyatt, he grins slowly. "These arenas must be smaller than they seem." The man's question draws weak laughter from him that dies as quickly as it starts. "Him? I'd imagine he's back-" He breathes, has to pause to collect himself. He's so cold his teeth are chattering. "...Back at the Capitol by now." He replies, grinning wide.

A muscle twitched in Wyatt's jaw, his lips pressed thin.

"You killed him?"

Well. It hadn't really been him who had killed Aunamee. But then, he did lead the man to the crevasse. And thus his death.

"More or less." The scientist smirks.

He'd failed.

Another twitch his jaw, his mouth a line, hard line, his knuckles whitening on his knife.

He took a deep breath. His fingers slowly loosened.

But justice was still done.

"Good."

"Indeed." He agrees, his eyes on the knife in Wyatt's hand. "I don't s-suppose you'd much mind sending me there next?" Wyatt seems the merciful type to him. And if not mercy, then surely their past encounters would leave a bit of a grudge. Either way, he plans to take advantage.

"Is that what ya want?" he asked after a thoughtful beat, more for clarification then out of surprise.

He'd asked himself once, arena's back, when the snake's poision had been burning through his veins.

Some deaths just weren't fit any beast to suffer. Not even ones like Grey.

He move closer, crouched, studied the man's face with intent blue eyes. "Yer sure?"

The scientist grins at him, though it twitches at the edges. "S'faster." He replies. He isn't terribly keen on the idea of bleeding out on the ice. A gut wound could take hours depending on what Aunamee did or didn't hit. That's if he doesn't freeze to death first, of course.

He hadn't won the arena, but then, he didn't need to to be satisfied. Not this time.

They eyes looked him up and down, lingered on the gut wound. The knife handle shifted in his grip.

"Any particular preference?"

It was probably a courtesy more than Grey deserved, but Wyatt couldn't bring himself to just... attack a dying man. No matter his personal feelings on the matter.

A knife between the cervical vertebrae would likely be quickest, but that would involve moving and Grey is not entirely confident that Wyatt won't botch the job. The scientist licks his lips. They're blue with cyanosis. "Can you hit the carotid?" He asks. It shouldn't be difficult.

"If you c-can't, ...just leave me here." He gives a short laugh that comes out more a choke and then groans with pain. No more laughing.

A beat. A moment to absorb how strange it all was.

"I reckon so." He reached over and touched Grey lightly, a brush one of finger along the skin of his throat. (He was fair certain that was the right one.)

He shifted his weight, moved his hand to grip Grey's shoulder, and brought the knife up.

"Steady."

He flinches when Wyatt touches him and, for a moment, there's a look of intense discomfort bordering on panic on his face before he manages to quell it. Not everyone can locate the carotids merely by sight. He should have figured.

"Just do it." He says with blunt dispassion.

And he does, the knife coming down, slicing into Grey with a gentle - distinct - pop of cutting flesh.

The effect is immediate, blood, hot and fresh, spurting against Wyatt's palm. Then onto the snow, onto his pants as he pulls back, pulls the knife free. Great gushes of it. The smell raw and terrible, threatening to choke him.

(OOC: I'm not up to date on my medical info, so please correct me if I'm wrong and I'll fix this tag.)

(OOC: You're good!)

He jerks, teeth clenching as the knife bites into his neck, but it doesn't take long for his heart to pump what's left of his blood out in spurts timed to his pulse. He shuts his eyes as the darkness closes in, eager to return to the Capitol. To find Aunamee. To laugh at his failure.

His cannon fires only seconds later.

Wyatt backed away as the cannon fired, echoed around him, wiping at his face with his forearm.

He could feel Grey's blood on his cheeks, across his forehead, the bridge of his nose. Warm, so warm, when everything has been so cold.

He cleans his face, his blade. But there's nothing he can do about his clothes.

They stayed with him. A reminder of what he'd done, right or wrong. Wet and warm as he turned from the body, the flying ship purring over him.

Stiff and cold as the arena dragged on. End nowhere in sight.

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