Mini Arena 3

[etcircenses]

The kids are picked up from the daycare bright and early, but by the Capitol instead of their parents. It's just like old times in the arenas, with only children to contend.

25 - 24 - 23

Stylists are starting to get used to the mini-arenas, though it doesn't mean they've been allowed to dress tributes in whatever they want. All the tributes will be dressed as proxy copy of a respective video game character. All tributes are reminded about the ticket rules for this round.

20 - 19 - 18 - 17 - 16

The platforms lift them up, and there is no cornucopia to be seen. The only way tributes will be able to help and protect themselves is if they go out of their way to harm another tribute and get the tickets, which will be tallied by their watches. The lights of the games flicker and glow within the dark. Classic video game fight tunes play overhead. Before them lay a great and stretching obstacle course, filled with animatronic enemies and various other hazards.

11- 10 - 9 - 8

They've all been warned, don't step off your pedestal early. They have also been warned to put on a good show. That's all this is about, a good show. None of them have been told that there can be multiple winners this time around.

5 - 4

3

2

The sound of the gong plays crystal clear across the opening. The games have begun.

[OOC: Remember, this is forwardated by a week.]

Comments

[justoutrunyou]

Sandy's eyes were watering from the wind and pain as her body strained under the pressure of the smashing. When bits of cart came flying at her she let out another string of curses in some alien tongue and began throwing them back. Her car shuddered and smoke began to rise from under her seat but she kept the pedal down hard.

"Leave me alone you rasfarken gaddafinga son of a tirpdog!"

She was pretty sure those were foul words, she'd only just learned them a few days ago.

[culturalappropriation]

Having seen what the drinks did to Gary, Punchy's abstained, but that doesn't mean that he has a clear head. Punchy's dizzy and frail from dehydration; his head throbs and his vision wavers at the corners. It's like everything's being seen through a pane of glass that won't settle into place. The blood loss doesn't help.

That's why it's easier to stay focused on a single task: protect Sandy Marko. Get that gutsy little girl who so angered the Capitol to the finish line. She'll be a human-shaped middle finger at everything the Capitol's been trying to do, all the spirit they've been trying to quash, and Punchy is eager to lay down his life for such a cause.

And honestly, he sees Sandy as something of a hero, someone he would be proud to come in second to. She took action while everyone else was milling around, chipping away at tiny tasks in hope of a future too bleary to be predicted.

He jumps into one of the Go-Karts and goes, slamming on the pedal to try and catch up to her - not to overtake her, but to defense her like a damn Chain Chomp hanging from the end of her car. And that's exactly what he's trying to do when he sees Kenny moving in for her.

He guns it, barreling towards the rapidly-shrinking space between them with a righteous yell. "Shove off, motherfucker! You don't know her like that!"

[korosu]

"You don't know her like that!"

His vision had been tunneled, practically, on fucking up the girl in front of him; so Kenny didn't see or hear the third approaching go-kart nor the teenage boy shouting at him until far too late. It promptly smashed between them, sending his own car spinning sort of diagonally across the road. It would have been comical if it didn't leave Kenny frantically fighting for the steering wheel, attempting in vain to wrest the damn thing back into control.

He slammed his foot on the brake, as if cracking down on some sort of panic button. The go-kart's tires screeched horribly, but it wasn't enough; he'd already flown too close to the wall on the other side. There was the bursting of glass and crunch of metal as the vehicle impacted, leaving the entire front of it little more than a mangled mess.

It all happened so quickly that Kenny didn't even have time to scream, the crash having thrown him forward onto the engine. The choking stench of smoke told him he needed to get away from there, now, a ball of burnt bloody pink fluff rolling off the side of the car just in time for the whole front of it to explode. All he saw was a bright flash of yellow light, the sound too deafening at point blank for him to hear it. And the car was thus totaled.

Mother of fucks.

[justoutrunyou]

His intentions may have been good but unfortunately for Punch and Sandy, the girls luck had run out

When Punchy smashed into Kenny a piece of his cart had broken off and Sandy's cart had run over it. The shard of twisted metal shredded her tire and her cart suddenly jerked hard to the side.

Sandy never even saw what had caused her crash. She just felt the pain of her seatbelt cutting into her shoulder, and then the sudden lurch in her gut as the seatbelt snapped and she was thrown from her car.

All her training in how to take a hit or how to fall couldn't save her from the speed of the impact. The sickening crack she heard as her body hit the wall twisted her guts and she was glad she hadn't had drank the drink they'd given her because she was sure it would be coming up now.

When the cart caught up to her it landed on her lower body and while she felt the pressure...she couldn't feel any pain from it.

Dazed and with her vision swimming she assumed she must be dying, after all she couldn't move what else could it be?

But her eyes continued to blink and her lungs shuddered with each breath. If she was dying...it was too slow.

[culturalappropriation]

Punchy isn't expecting the collision to feel like that. A wave of numbness zips through his body, from his palms against the steering wheel of the cart. His car spins but not off the road, not fast or disorientingly enough for him not to see what he's done.

He slams his break and slams his head against a metal bar on the car made for kids much shorter than him. Blood drips down his eyebrows, into his eyes. He ignores it as he kicks the car door open, contorting himself to get out of something too small for his six-foot-two body.

He pauses between the two cars crashed alongside his, then sprints to Sandy's.

[justoutrunyou]

A face came into her line of sight. He was...concerned. And that made her feel bad.

Her lungs were having a harder and harder time filling, was this the guy who had attacked her?

No it was just the person who'd tried to stop him. He'd tried to save her but it had all gone wrong. So horribly wrong.

"Thanks for trying." She wheezed with tears in her eyes.

She'd tried so hard to stick it to the Capitol, and had gotten less then ten feet from the finish line.

"G-go on...win." she rasped closing her eyes and feeling the numbness spreading up the back of her neck and along her scalp.

If this was her last arena, at least the other tributes had proved to her the Capitol couldn't ruin them all. Friends and strangers had stepped up to defend her.

And now everyone had seen who was willing to kill a little girl .

She'd died many different horrible ways. This one was surprisingly painless and peaceful.

[culturalappropriation]

There's nothing he can do. The weight of that sinks deep in Punchy's gut like a stone. All his hopes and ideals are wrapped around it, and they, too, drown.

He doesn't even notice the blood dribbling into his eyelashes. He just crouches down next to her (she's so small) and takes her hand. It already looks grey against his pink palm. He feels the heat leaving it, the little twitches in her fingers as her body struggles to live even as she accepts her fate.

"It's okay, kiddo. It's breezy." He squeezes her hand. "See you on the flip-side."

He's watched too many people die. He never gets desensitized. Maybe that's his curse. He watches this little kid he doesn't even know die and it rips him open right down the center, like it has every time.

[korosu]

Several feet away, another little kid crawls from the wreckage that surrounds him, his vision choked by smoke. With his costume in tatters all over him, he's basically a pile of bloody rags at this point, interspersed with patches of burnt and charred skin. He might even be mortally wounded, although he doesn't feel any of it. There's little else to guide him forward but his own delirium, a desperation that lingers even as grasping onto his surroundings proves to be impossible.

A shard from the mess is clutched tightly in one hand, shrapnel that's still hot and smoking a little. Kenny can barely walk, but he limps his way toward the finish without even really registering who else might be there, waiting. Her body is prone on the ground now, the girl he'd been gunning after. All it takes is one slash, one swift blow, and it will be over. For her, for him, for everyone here.

He collapses to his knees when he's nearly there, gasping for breath a little, but proceeds to inch forward in a half-crawl with the makeshift weapon brandished and ready.