thearena | I'm a firestarter

Who| Ian C and open
What| Ian's fiery death
Where| First floor cafe
When| Not long after the arena opens
Warnings/Notes| Fire, suicide, setting yourself on fire, likelihood of fire and liquid nitrogen burns later

Ian had been impatient in the elevator as it took him upstairs. After one flight he ran out, hoping to find something more useful than a mostly empty car park. If he could be sure of getting a petrol cap open he could have lit a fire, thrown it down there and blown himself. Guaranteed quick death, but it would also put others in danger, which he didn't want. So he'd gone in search of something to set light to.

He got lucky in the cafe. Plenty of packs of things in cardboard and cardboard would burn. He built himself a fire, although by necessity it was only a small one, then sat in the middle of it. He took a deep breath, tried not to think about how slowly and in how much pain he was going to die, and then calmly set light to the cardboard and to his pyjamas.

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Ian had also found an elevator as he fought his way away from the Cornucopia to try and find somewhere relatively safe, to hide while he worked out what he had managed to grab and what he would need.

He glanced at rooms as he walked, keeping his eye out for other tributes as well as anything useful. He saw the cafe and darted in there. He was prepared to meet other tributes, ones he hopefully wouldn't have to fight but was ready if they attacked.

What he wasn't expecting was what he saw, a fire, Ian in the middle of it...

"What the fuck are you doing?" He screamed running towards him, to grab him, to try and extinguish the flames.

Ian could feel the heat from the fire and it was starting to burn his skin. He was determined not to cry out - for one thing it might bring people running and if they stopped him he could end up being burnt just enough to live in agony or die slowly, which was the last thing he wanted.

What he hadn't expected (but should have done, in retrospect) was to be found now. And by Ian too. He looked over at the boy, worried. "Stay away!" he shouted. The last thing he wanted was for Ian to get hurt.

"No, you... fuck, you get away." He got closer, not close enough to get burned. He needed a plan, how to get Ian out of there without setting himself on fire.

"Drop to the floor, try and starve the flames."

He wanted to feed the fire, not starve it. "No." After that he had to grit his teeth against crying out, but the expression of pain on his face would be visible and he was past doing anything about that now.

"Yes." He shouted back, eyes angry as he rushed forward again, "Get the fuck out of there." He reached out, trying to find something not on fire to grab, his mind focused only on getting Ian out of there.

Ian shook his head. The smoke was getting to him as well, making his eyes water, so it was harder to see. Which was probably just as well.

((OOC: I was thinking that the smoke is going to set the sprinklers off sooner or later, and since they're liquid nitrogen, they're probably going to finish the job on Ian C's burns. If that's ok with you, since Ian G will need to take cover if that happens (and for the sake of simplicity they can go off only in the cafe, so it doesn't affect everyone else)))

((OOC: Yep I already said in another thread that Ian is pretty hurt by them since I assumed they'd be set off.))

"Ian, you fucking idiot, come on." The heat was too much, and Ian had to snatch his hands back before they got burst.

Not that that mattered since a moment later there was a loud noise, sirens. A fire alarm. Ian felt a flicker of hope, if there was a sprinkler system in this place...

But it was killed a moment later as the first drops of... whatever it was, fell onto him and he screamed in pain.

It put the fire out, but since it had burnt his pyjamas, Ian had no cover from the cold of the sprinklers. He wanted to tell Ian to get away, but it was all he could do to cover his face and scream, falling onto the ashes of the fire, unable to sit up any more.

Fortunately, the sprinklers turned off once they'd done their job and there was quiet in the cafe, except for the screams.

Ian lay still for a moment, pain flooding through him though he managed to stop screaming, the screams turning into pained sobs instead. After a few moments, when he was sure the chemicals had stopped falling he lifted his head. Everything hurt, like burning but cold.

"Ian?" His voice was barely more than a sob, was Ian even alive? Did Ian want to find out?

Ian wondered vaguely why he couldn't feel anything any more. When he tried to move his hands away from his face his arms felt like they didn't belong to him any more.

"Ian?" he called back in return, his voice hoarse, but he was more worried about the boy than himself. But it was just as well that he couldn't move, as his body was covered in burns, he was just fortunate that they'd burnt so far through his skin that he couldn't feel them any more.

He also wasn't going to live long, but he didn't know that.

He crawled closer, hissing in pain at every step as his hands and feet took the brunt of the cold burns. "I'm here..." He blinked into the gloom trying to see Ian.

When he did he wished he hadn't. Living with Frank was enough to give anyone a strong stomach but Ian felt like he was about to throw up. His arms all but gave way under him. "Shit... Fuck..."

He couldn't drag his eyes away. It was like something out of the kind of horror film they had to confiscate from Carl, except it was real life and this was Ian, and he was a person Ian knew and somehow he was still alive...

There was nothing Ian could do to save him, he knew that just by looking. It was the sort of thing that a hospital, life support and a lot of surgery would struggle to deal with never mind one freaking out kid in his pajamas and a field first aid kit.

"Fuck... can you even hear me?"

He could see that Ian was speaking and he could hear noises, but the two didn't correlate. The noises must be in his head, he concluded.

"I'm fine," he said to Ian in a triumph of understatement. He wanted to reach out to him, but his arms wouldn't cooperate. Given that Ian seemed to wave about, blur and sometimes split into two overlapping copies, his eyes probably weren't working that well either.

Any other time Ian would have kept talking to clung to life, but given that he'd wanted to die in the first place, he didn't fight much. He managed to turn his head to look up a bit more, shouted, "This is what I think of what you put us through," which wasn't actually very loud, then closed his eyes. A blissful blackness came over him.

It really wasn't that loud, Ian heard though and couldn't do anything but watch the body fall to the ground. Ian went a little closer, but he really didn't need to, it was obvious he was dead.

Ian stumbled backwards, reaching out to steady himself against the wall. He did throw up then, before leaning his forhead against the wall and trying to calm down, he could feel the cold burns on his skin, and he realised he had no idea how to treat them.

All he knew was that he had to get out of here, the alarms would have warned people, and there were those who would be warned towards here and not away. Not to mention those who knew the other Ian who would put two and two together and stab Ian before asking questions.

I'm a firestarter

I don't have any sufficiently traumatised icosn

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