A terrible mistake was made

[designatedfreak]

Who| Max and Kevin
What| End Game
When| End of Arena
Where| Amusement Park
Warnings/Notes| Gore. Death of a child.


The world was ending and she was alone. No, that was a lie. There was another left alive in this Apocalypse - Him, the one who had caused Courfeyrac to fall before his time. She had listened to the canons fire and looked at the still faces that were shown in the Arena, noting that He had yet to be counted among the dead. That was a problem she would fix.

Her skin felt like it was boiling...or was that her blood? Manticore had trained them to resist extremes in heat and cold, but even this new heat was beginning to tax her. Still she moved through what was left of the Arena with purpose. Part of her wished she had eaten the fruit from the orchard before the trees had burned away. It didn't matter. The hotter is became the angrier and more animalistic she allowed herself to be; this was what she was created for, hunting and killing. She was hungry for revenge, and how she planned on gorging on this revenge.

Weapons in hand and on her person, Max stalked through the park until she found the only other living soul. A direct attack to whatever he had become was too dangerous, but with so much gone and her only weapons good for close-combat she didn't have too many choices. Leaning down, she picked up a rock and threw it at Him. Let him attack first or at the very least try.

Comments

[asmilinggod]

The rock hit him in the back of the head - it almost clung for a second to the sticky gray skin there, brushing away another couple strands of the stringy blonde hair remaining. He made a vague grunting sound in response, turning around to face the assailant with alarming accuracy; the longer he had spent blind, the sharper his sense of smell had become.

The new, extra teeth grew in strangely, wrong - the sides of his face were in tatters, jagged bone sticking out every which way...and worse, turning the inside of his mouth into an iron maiden for his tongue. He didn't speak, didn't roar - it was static that tumbled from his throat, mechanical and impossible.

"HHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHhhhhhh."

He didn't charge immediately - but his stance made it clear that he might, too-thin arms swinging back, the dislocated limb still in one hand.

He remembered the scent, somewhere in him. The girl, from the orchard.

A child. How hard could this be?

[designatedfreak]

Hopefully harder than he believed. Max charged at him, lowering the heavy wrench so that as she flipped in the air the wrench might knock out a few of those hideous teeth. There was time wasted explaining how this was revenge for Courfeyrac's death or how she had lost what little compassion she had once held for her fellow Tributes, there was only a flash of movement as she struck at what she could only guess were his vulnerable areas.

Did a mutated creature such as Kevin have any vulnerable areas left?

[asmilinggod]

The blow successfully knocked two or three teeth free - but there were so many to spare that it scarcely seemed to matter. His head whipped back and then straightened again, the sound of static growing louder within him.

He didn't have much for vulnerability, stopping to examine it. He was emaciated, and there was the chance that the thinness might make him more apt to break, to tackle - but even before he had changed, pain was a faint sensation to Kevin. He would probably die before he really noticed that he was hurting, and that made him dangerous on a normal day.

Today, the blow mostly just made him angry.

Turning around to where she landed, he lunged toward her, movements erratic and vicious. But wait - something on the back of his neck was flickering, sparking out from charred black skin. Something mechanical?

[designatedfreak]

Where he is vicious and erratic, Max is nothing but precision, although her aim just as violent. The flash on his neck draws her attention as it is so very familiar to her own barcode. There is every chance that he is nothing but a thing created by the Capitol for this Arena. Max feigns to the right and then jumps over him, her hand reaching out for whatever it was that sparked against his neck.

[asmilinggod]

Whatever it is in his neck, it's buried in his flesh - but with the skin peeling and the tissue rotted, it would be quite possible to remove it with a strategic strike. It was small, but it kept crackling with electricity, sending shocks down his spine that he no longer seemed to notice. For the grab that Max made, all she winds up with is a handful of burnt skin and some potentially valuable insight.

He lets out a wordless snarl as she jumps over him, turning blindly again to lunge out in the direction she landed in. He's all teeth and vicious movements right now, spindly hands searching, trying to grab, rip, tear.

[designatedfreak]

Max fought back a hiss of pain when the creature's fingernails drove deep into her calf. Her fall was less than graceful and the wound would more than slow her down, but that didn't Max was giving up. She glanced at the skin in her hand and decided that whatever that blinking thing was, it was quite possibly important to his state of being. Getting around him with her leg as injured as it was would be another matter.

Taking out the wire from her pocket, Max reached for one of the flailing limbs in hopes of tearing off a hand and making him slightly less deadly.

[asmilinggod]

When nails connected with flesh and then flesh pulled away again, Kevin hungrily lapped at the blood dribbling down his fingers, momentarily distracted as he tried to sate his hunger in any way possible -

Giving Max the very easy chance of getting the wire around his opposite hand. The one still gripping the limb of his "mother."

He didn't have time to react, his lack of sight and blinding hunger getting the better of him for a rare instant.

[designatedfreak]

She pulled hard, but like this she was only so strong, and with the blood loss Max was slowly losing the ferocity of battle. The tighter she pulled, the closer she came to the creature.

Around them the ground shook and whatever was left of the rusted roller coaster fell into oblivion. Max fell to the ground but refused to let go of the wire. She would make this thing hurt.

[asmilinggod]

The sound that came out of Kevin's mouth couldn't really be called a scream. It was distortion and static, the wail and grind of machinery being overtaxed - sounds that just couldn't possibly be coming from a human being. Impossible. Everything about all of this was impossible.

Yet here they were - on the ground, Kevin's hand coming undone as he was pulled down atop Max, screeching and hissing through far too many teeth.

Now that the distance was closed, however, the sightless monster could tell exactly where she was...and opening his jaw wide, he snapped it down at the girl's throat, intending to tear out flesh and arteries. Intending to kill.

Intending to eat.

[designatedfreak]

She didn't scream. Her expression didn't even change as those teeth, those hundreds of teeth, tore into her throat. Instead Max held onto the severed hand and kept staring into the sightless face. She was a soldier and would die like a proper soldier.

Her defiance against death didn't last long as darkness overtook her. Finally her body went limp and the last canon sounded.

[asmilinggod]

The moment that cannon sounded, Kevin didn't react. He clung to Max's lifeless body, gorging himself, unaware at this point that he was even being watched by the public.

Except he wasn't.

The cameras were cut, the show was over.

He was still tearing flesh from bone when flames began to pour from the chasms in the earth, lighting the trees, lighting everything...igniting Kevin. He roared with a final, impossibly loud hiss of static as he slumped over, skin and organs scorching and crackling.

The gray monster had been the last one standing - but the Capitol wouldn't need the gray monster.

They would need the smiling one.