thearena | It Was a Mercy Kill, No, It Was an Accident [Open]

WHO | Howard Bassem and anyone willing
WHAT | Howard sets traps for animals and humans and collects fresh water. No death, but close calls and injury are fine.
WHEN | A couple days after the Cornucopia
WHERE | Outside the ruins, near the cliffs.
WARNINGS / NOTES | No warnings yet.

Howard doesn't want to leave himself exposed, but with nothing to write with and the sky murky with fog, he doesn't trust himself to navigate this strange area without keeping an eye on the sea. As such, he's sticking to the tree line near the cliffs, trying to avoid stepping too far into the open or too close to any edges. The morning fog has made the area slippery, and the ground beneath his feet has an unnerving way of shifting; he's landed on his hands more than once trying to find water and food. His palms are raw and bloody.

He ends up finding some edible berries, identifiable by the leaves, and chowing down on most of them. He leaves a few, as well as some poisonous berries he found earlier. Nestled in the leaves of the safe fruits, they almost look like they grew their naturally. He doesn't have a weapon, not even ropes to make snares, so this is the best he can do, and if he's honest with himself, he's being a little half-hearted about it. As much as he doesn't want to die, he doesn't know if he has it in him to kill someone in cold blood. Letting them stumble into their own death by not knowing their deadly plants isn't really murder, it's just not interfering with someone else's ignorance. Obviously.

He doesn't have anything to carry water in, and given how cold it's been getting he doesn't want his clothes wet, so he'd do better to stay near the fresh water during the day. He rubs a hand over his temple; he's already got a headache, maybe from dehydration. He finds a patch of rocks and hides behind it, hoping the handprint of blood on the nearby rocks blends in with the scenery. If someone stumbles on the trap here, they'll die sooner rather than later, and he can take their clothing to keep him warm at night - not to mention anything else they're carrying.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Wyatt isn't much a fan of the Ruins. He wasn't involved in the great collapse a few areans back, but he remembers it just the same: how it looked on the screens, all the tributes that died....

He wasn't particularly keen on seeing a repeat.

But Neeshka liked them and so, despite his reservations, he was sticking a bit closer. At night anyways.

Now, during the day, he was heading back out into the woods despite a sudden, fierce pounding in his head to check his remaining snares.

Just short of the treeline he happened to glance over... and stopped.

Was that blood?

He rubbed his eyes, wondering if the pain was starting to make him see things.

Meanwhile, Howard has moved a few feet in his hiding place at the sound of fluttering. A gull is caught in someone's snare. It looks like it's been there a while, because it's not thrashing so much as weakly flapping its wings at odd intervals. The berries were enough to keep him from dying, but he was a good twenty pounds underweight before arriving in the arena, and no matter what, he can't and won't afford to pass up a meal.

He takes his good fortune with a grain of salt. The fact that someone else set a snare means someone else is in the area, and he's stumbled onto their 'territory', so to speak. Like animals. Howard's been under tense survival scenarios long enough that he's lost any concepts that humans are some kind of higher species. He creeps over to the gull and snaps its neck. It gives a strangled squawk as he gets his hands on it, before it dies, and he quietly curses how loud it is. The blood from his hands gets on the white feathers, looking orange and paintlike.

Holding the bird, he stays still a second, then slowly peeks up over the rocks - putting himself in plain sight of Wyatt.

A sharp cry of pain and then suddenly a face popping up amongst the rocks, like some damned ground squirrel. Any other place and time, Wyatt might have laughed, but here, his hand snapped for his knife, startled.

He'd already been attacked once this arena.

Unarmed except for a dead bird, Howard knows better than to try and pick a fight with someone bigger than him. Unfortunately, he also doesn't think running for it is going to be very helpful - even if he knew he could outrun Wyatt, the slippery edges of the cliffs make that terrifyingly hazardous.

So he does the next best thing. He drops the bird and puts his hands up, in the universal gesture of 'I'm unarmed'.

"Please don't kill me, I'll give you everything I have!"

The voice sounded young - not a child, but not quite the sound of full-grown man either - and that stayed Wyatt's hand.

Leaving his knife tucked into his belt, he studied the raised arms for a beat and then called, "Come on out, son. Out here where I can see ya."

Howard nods quickly and steps away from the rocky outcropping, into view. He's terrified - his skinny frame's trembling is visible even from a few feet away. His eyes keep going back to Wyatt's knife.

"I was just hungry. I was just looking for food." While his voice would sound plaintive anyway, he does intentionally play up the weak and helpless tone. He isn't a threat, and he's trying to do everything in his wheelhouse to convey that.

In the back of his mind, Wyatt could already hear Neeshka - all tail-flickin' mad - when she found out, but he made no move to hurt the boy.

He couldn't attack some scared, young kid who'd done him no harm.

Glancing up at the boy's bloodied hands, a long sigh whistled out of Wyatt's nose and he nodded toward the trees. "I got a snare back in there. You find it?"

"Yeah, there was a bird. You can have it, it's dead but it's fresh." He slowly bends over to retrieve the bird from behind the rock. No sudden movements. "And there's a patch of berries over that way."

He gestures to his trap, a few yards away.

"Go on and take it," Wyatt replied simply, not even bothering to look in the direction of the berries the boy mentioned. "Then I'd advise clearin' out, ya hear?"

He tried to not to think about it, but deep down, Wyatt knew, sooner or later, only one tribute would be left. He might go down before then, but he also might not, and he already had no idea how he was going to do if it came down to him versus Neeshka. He didn't want to have to worry this young buck too.

Best for him to strike out and stay away. Hopefully... it'd sort itself out that way.

That was cruel enough in and of itself, but it was the only response Wyatt had.

Howard doesn't pause to question Wyatt's decision. He clutches the bird close, like a macabre mimicry of a child with teddy bear, and mouths the word 'thank you'.

He still hopes Wyatt takes the berries. Whether Wyatt's letting him go or not, only one can survive, and he's too young to die. Not that the world ever cares how young you are before it kills you, but for God's sake, he's been fifteen for only two weeks now. Surely youth trumps virtue.

He takes his leave as quickly as he can, with clumsy staggers and slides as he makes his way back to te tree line.

It Was a Mercy Kill, No, It Was an Accident [Open]

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