thearena | It doesn't matter who was wrong and who was right.

Who: Sandy and Ermac
What: Ermac pays the price for heroism
When: Week 5
Where: By the lake of communication around the same time as this
warning: Death, violence and the usual

Sandy was...for the first time in a couple weeks, actually enjoying herself.

She should have realized that was a sure sign that doom was around the corner.

Chatting up Phil and Jeremy and anyone else who felt the urge to speak with her through the lake that was connected to the network, she was so invested in the moment and trying to ignore her burns and grumbling stomach that she didn't notice the meadow was no longer empty.

Shuffling out of the trees, surprisingly quite for his size was a dragon, roughly ten feet tall and eighteen feet long. His thick muscles rippled with each step as his claws tore at the grass and he sniffed the air. He smelled a meal.

She was a scrawny meal to be sure, but a meal was better then no meal.

Wiggling his haunches in excitment and irritation the beast lunged forward crashing out of the trees and knocking some down in the process. That was enough to get Sandy's attention and she spun around with a yelp grabbing for her bundle of supplies and scrambling away from the water.

Thankfully, there was someone closer to her then the dragon was. Someone who had arrived in the nick of time.

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Ermac had merely been skulking around the lake, hunting for supplies and avoiding the dragons as much as possible. He'd only been given a hunting knife, after all, so taking on such dangerous beasts was too much of a risk even for him.

Then he heard Sandy scream. He didn't consider himself to be heroic by any means, but the sound of her in peril is enough to get him up and running. Like a bolt of lightning, he leaps seemingly out of nowhere and lands on the dragon's back, and wastes no time in stabbing the beast. In the throes of battle, he only has enough time to say one thing:

"Run!"

The beast's priorities change instantly from the meal that is now dashing for the trees, to the stabbing pain in it's back. Bucking and twisting wildly in an attempt to throw him off. It's tail whips dangerously around and it's wings flap furiously.

Sandy reaches the tree line and once she's sure she's put enough distance between them, she drops her supplies and digs around in her bag. The contents had shifted but soon enough she finds what she was looking for.

A superhero mask.

Bringing it to her face, she feels the familiar surge of strength as her skin hardened like stone.

Ermac is thrown off the beast, landing hard on his shoulder. Pain shoots straight through the bone, but it still holds his weight when he pushes off the ground. It's not broken, or at least not broken enough to be useless. A small relief.

He springs to his feet and dives under the dragon's belly, slashing upward with his regrettably small knife. His brain registers the splashing of hot blood on his face in a kind of distant way, as if he were watching the battle from a great distance and merely noting that he'd done some serious damage to the dragon rather than being underneath it.

That mental distance, incidentally, is what allows him to notice Sandy sitting by the tree line and putting on a mask instead of running.

"Did you not hear us? Run!"

"I heard you! But I can help!"

Her skin was gray now, the color of slate and boulders. With her knife in hand she began circling the beast looking for an opening.

With blood spraying out of its belly the Dragon was furious now, tail whipping wildly, it's wings flapped furiously and it began to lift off the ground. Would Ermac let it get totally airborn?

Meanwhile the mask began to melt on Sandy's stone skin much to her shock and confusion. It sizzled and bubbled and absorbed into her flesh not painfully, but tingling. Leaving a numbness where the mask had once been. Was her skin still stone? Who cares it still felt like she could take on the world!

"We don't need help!"

He rolls out of the way of the dragon's foot as it tries to stomp him, and grabs a wing, pulling hard. Every ounce of the strength he'd been given to compete in Mortal Kombat is put use here, bending the dragon's wing farther and farther until he feels the bone give and hears a sickening snap.

"Just run!"

The dragon screeched and roared as it's bones snapped. It was getting weaker with every passing moment as blood stained the grass and it's swipes grew more desperate. In it's fury it tried to roll over and flatten Ermac. Would it be fast enough?

Sandy on the other hand sniffed at his denial of her services. Didn't he know who she was? She was Cassandra fucking Marko. She'd lived and died more times then almost anyone in the arena. Even if he did have the souls of a billion or something dead people in him she was still worth helping! Being helped. Providing...whatever!

But if he wanted her to run fine. She darted into the trees and hid, waiting for her moment. It would come soon and then, THEN he'd see who needed who's help around here!!!

The dragon nearly flattens Ermac, but he manages to roll himself out of the way. His foot, however, gets caught under the beast at the last possible second, and the sharp pain shooting up his leg tells him that at least one of his toes is broken. No matter. Adrenaline numbs it almost immediately, allowing him to slash into the dragon's side in the hopes of getting it to shift its weight enough for him to free himself.

His slash is successful and the dragon shifts and rumbles to it's feet. Apparently it's had enough because it's limping and trying to drag itself away from him, wobbling and swaying crookedly. Will he chase after it to finish it off? Lots of good meat and bones there that could be useful.

He would be a very poor Kombatant indeed if he just let his opponent get away. Ermac pulls himself to his feet and, with a slight limp that will certainly become much worse once the adrenaline wears off, chases after the dragon. Once he's caught up to it, he buries his blade deep in its side and pulls hard, leaving a horrendous gash in the animal's side that exposes both muscle and entrails. He knows this wound will eventually be fatal, but this was a competition. He had an audience!

Ermac grimaces and plunges his arm into the beast's belly, pulling and tearing at tissue until he feels the dragon's beating heart. He grabs it, burying his nails deep into the muscle, and wrenches the slippery organ free with a triumphant roar. Even as the dragon is still dying, he holds the heart up victoriously, allowing the blood to drip onto his face for the entertainment of the viewers. The rush of winning, of being a champion...this is exactly what he was made for!

For just that one moment, he's completely forgotten about Sandy.

Despite her track record, Sandy actually had learned a fair bit about stealth. You wouldn't know it given how often she would break cover to talk to other tributes or exploring places in the open.

But her greatest strength was still her speed. Like a bolt from a crossbow she shot across the grass between them and buried her knife in his back at where she estimated his spine would be, a manic grin on her face.

To say that Ermac is surprised would be a severe understatement. One second he was standing, triumphant, and the next his entire body was numb, unresponsive, and collapsing to the blood-soaked ground. He somehow lands in such a way that he can just barely see Sandy, which just confuses him further.

He tries to call her name, but his diaphragm doesn't want to respond. At all. Not even to breathe. Was he really going to just suffocate in his second Arena? After apparently being killed by an ally? Ermac would be outraged, except that the burning in his nonfunctional lungs and the pressure building behind his eyes pushes out any other feelings.

She grins down at him and leaves the knife in, taking her sharpened piece of bone from the city and stabbing again and again. The look in her eyes is unfocused and manic, her voice high pitched and giddy.

"There's no place in this world for heroes!" She reminds him as a dark callback to their previous conversations.

Fortunately, he can't feel her stabbing him, but he can hear it even as the world fades away. The last thing he feels before expiring is simply...confusion.

It doesn't matter who was wrong and who was right.

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Sandy Wins: Fatality