thearena | Mini Arena 3

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.

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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.

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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.]

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She only stops when he falls, only feels remorse once he's on the ground. In that instant she questions her motivations, if what she's doing is right or fair. Felicity isn't moved by justice, she's moved by power, but something feels wrong about continuing her assault when Punchy seems so small and weak.

"Get up," she commands, extending a hand to him, to pull him to his feet. "I won't kick you when you are down. You must stay up."

"A'ight."

He doesn't take her hand. Whether it's because he doesn't see it, what with one of his eyes bright red with broken capillaries now, or because he's too proud to is up to debate. But he does get up, straighten his back, and ready himself again for her pounding.

"Come on, bitch," he snarls, not because he means it, not because he feels anything but gratitude for Felicity right now, but because he wants to spur her on. Wants her to unleash all that anger she's had kept in society's chains out on him. "You're running out of time."

He needs her to get more tickets. He can't win this. He can't live with himself if he wins this.

Felicity is spurred on and she lunges back toward Punchy with all of her might, kicking, scratching, ready to bite him if it comes down to it. He has to be beaten. He simply cannot win. Not like this. Not ever. She doesn't hold back, won't let herself. It's all or nothing now. And she's so worked up by it all that she doesn't even notice that she's crying.

They both are. No one could blame Punchy for shedding tears for the beating he's undergoing, but that's a fallacious attribution of his weeping. Every time her blows are too much for his balance, he falls to his knees and gets back up. He feels something pop in his knee. Both eyes are red as rubies. The cut across his brow opens up again and blood leaks down and merges with the streams from his nose and lips.

He hears a countdown, three, two, one...Something goes off. He takes a stuttering step back, trying to evade her latest blow.

"Felicity!" he says, sparing her the nicknames and epithets in this moment of truth.

The number on his watch still says 550. It blinks green at him. He thrusts his wrist out at Felicity so she can check it. So he can check hers.

As the timer goes off, she's near the point of collapse, hands bloodied and mangled to the point that she cannot tell which blood is hers and which is Punchy's. She's almost certain she's broken her fingers, her wrists feel weak, arms aching worse than she could have imagined.

And for what? What good was any of it?

"It wasn't enough!" Her voice cracks as she slips down to her knees, arm extended to him. "It's all for nothing! You've won!"

Tonight, part of him will suspect that this was all engineered to get him out of the Arenas, to separate him for weeks on end from his rebellious fellows. He'll think that Sandy's cart was wired to crash if she got too close to the finish line, that they used his collision with her as a convenient excuse. He'll concoct theories that lighten, but don't erase, the burden of being the reigning champion of child-killers.

But right now he can't think. All he can see is the blood dripping from his brow and on Felicity's hand, and an awful replay of Dave's head smacking against the wall, of Sandy crashing into the wall. Of his gruesome, enormous victory.

He falls to his knees with her, another unwilling Victor in a line that's getting longer the more the Neverending Quell goes on.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

There's a Hail Mary on his tongue and a hole in his heart.

Felicity is sobbing now, her whole body shaking with each quaking cry, and she isn't even thinking when she reaches to Punchy, to hold him as blood and tears mingle in a hot, sticky, horrible mess all over her face and hands and body. All she wants is to get out of this ruthless cycle, to have a taste of freedom. That chance is gone now. She's stuck now with battered, bleeding hands and a heart that's bruised beyond repair.

"If you are a Victor, be a good one."

"You got it, Felicity." Her real name, not bitch or shawty or honey or boo. And he would reassure her again, but his throat is too tight with tears, his bleeding mouth wrenched back into the grimace of sorrow. He brings her into his arms and they clutch each other for dear life, the champion of Hell and the runner-up.

Mini Arena 3

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all i have left are brunette icons :V

/wrap ;A;