thearena | But you said it often, before you were lost, that it's only a day.

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But you said it often, before you were lost, that it's only a day.

Who| Terezi, The Initiate, Charlie
What| Charlie is looking for a victim and finds the Initiate. Terezi doesn't like that very much. Fighting ensues.
Where| Inside The Authority (sporting goods)
When| Week 5
Warnings/Notes| Death

The Authority. It's a weird name for a store, but Terezi is pretty sure that humans have a lot of weird names for a lot of things at this point. The only thing she really cares about is what the Gamemakers put into it. At this late point in the arena, most of the shops have probably been picked over quite a bit, but she's not looking for anything too particular.

She leads the Initiate along to the store, sometimes by hand and sometimes simply by asking him to follow. She's needed more medical supplies since his injury. Fabric for bandages isn't hard to find, but tape is in somewhat shorter supply. She's confidant that there should be some here, though. That's the sort of thing humans keep around athletic equipment, right?

Entering the store, Terezi lets go of the Initiate's hand and begins checking aisle by aisle for anything that she might be able to use. She's only really here for one thing, but it doesn't hurt to stock up more. She does have that mission from Shepard to carry out, after all.

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It's gotten far enough in to the arena that he can hang onto her hand as she guides him along. It's familiar. Comfortable. He hardly feels the nag of "don't touch tributes" at all.

He's a little slower than she is due to dragging along his one injured leg, but she doesn't seem to mind. Moreover, they ain't run into anyone so much. The arena is nearing it's late days. Most of everyone will be dead and, hopefully, back in Capitol. On one hand, it was easier to relax now, both with everyone gone and because... well, he didn't really feel as much like an avox anymore. For that matter, he didn't feel much like his old self either. What he's left with is a strange sort of ease. A calm even, beyond the fear.

On the other hand, with the arena nearing it's end, he would be dying soon. Would they bring him back for further avoxing? Or would they simply leave him dead? He doesn't truly think he's got other options. But, watching Terezi's guarding back as she guides him, he thinks this right now isn't so bad.

She lets go of his hand and he takes doing the same thing she does; heading off to find tape for keeping his bandages on, and looking for any other supplies she can use. Maybe he's a little too at ease.

Intellectually, Charlie understands that in order to survive this, she's going to have to start killing people. She hasn't yet - hasn't even attacked anyone - but she's also very aware that if she doesn't, sooner or later, she's going to get boxed into a corner where she has no choice.

She needs to beat them to the punch, before the audience turns on her.

So it's with some trepidation that she's stalking through Authority, low to the ground and padding silently on bare feet. It isn't that she doesn't know how to do this; she's hunted and killed plenty of game on the island. It's just...a little different when it's people that she's hunting.

Spotting the Initiate from behind, she sees her opportunity - and drawing a deep breath, she hurries quietly up behind him, swinging her spear hard at the back of his ankles in an attempt to knock the towering figure down.

He's all paying attention to what's on the shelves when she comes up behind him. The problem with the avox bit of him fading out, the Alternian bit didn't come back to take it's place up for any of the important shit.

Like not being caught off gaurd.

His ankles caught in a snap-- even worse with his wounded leg-- and his hands go out to try and save himself. Claws scrape ineffectually along metal, and he brings several things crashing down as he lands on his back.

He's still got the bruises from falling down the stairs after he got shot, on top of having been, well, shot. The landing winds him, breath coming out in a sharp woosh. His eyes go up to catch sight of his assailant.

The assailant in question isn't the most expected kind to take down someone as large as Initiate.

She's small in frame, the flower in her hair steadily wilting as the Arena goes on. She's wearing a drapey dress, no makeup, and - right now - a worried expression. She spear between her hands shakes, but only a little. Her eyes are fixed on her would-be prey, and she recognizes the features now. Gray skin. Horns. Just like her dear friend. Her heart sinks fathoms in an instant.

But there isn't any going back now, is there?

Dropping on him, she lays the length of the spear across his throat, pressing it there, moving to choke him to death.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

It's not who he'd expect either, really. He can tell, almost immediately, that she doesn't really want to do this. He'd have never known such a thing on Alternia-- even the Signless, he thought a liar and no other troll had ever been apt for sparing.

Until he met the ones here. And he met all variety of human and otherwise what abstained from the cull. After all this time, he can finally recognize it, even if she's going to cull him anyway.

He's not afraid to die. But he is afraid to disobey. He was supposed to survive, Terezi, everyone had asked him to... His hands go up to the spear lay down, as the air is crushed from it. Only to drop down again.

He can't fight a tribute. I'm sorry Terezi. He closes his eyes and allows himself to choke. His fingers twitch with the effort of keeping still.

The crash startles Terezi out of her search, a sudden fear gripping her. She didn't expect anyone else to be around--at least not that she's heard until now. Fraysong isn't in her immediate vicinity, so she takes off towards the entrance again, trying to find which aisle he went down. Or what made that noise.

It doesn't take her more than a few seconds to find both the source of the scuffle and him. She doesn't recognize the woman on top of Fraysong, but she does note the shaft of the spear that she has pressed to his throat. And she notes that he's not fighting back, just lying there and letting her choke him. An immediate anger bubbles up in her chest at the thought of attacking someone as defenseless as this.

"Get off of him!" she shouts. Without thinking, Terezi sprints at and tackles the woman, aiming to knock Fraysong's assailant off of him and inevitably sending them both sprawling.

The lack of resistance out of the Initiate is already more than a little difficult for Charlie to bear. She's cringing, tears welling up in her eyes; more than anything, right now, she just...feels like a bully.

That feeling doesn't stick around for all that long.

Terezi slams into her tiny frame and sends her flying with the momentum, spear just barely remaining clutched in her left hand. She connects hard with the ground, rolling and skidding along with the troll in a tangle of limbs.

The alarm sets in only after they come to a halt, doe eyes flying open wide.

"W-wait-"

One moment the air's being crushed out of him, the next, he hears Terezi's cry, feels the rush of air as she passes, and the suddenly he can breathe again. Sort of.

He gasps sharp, eyes flying open, and then immediately takes to coughing. He rolls over onto his knees, eyes watering as his hand rises up to his sure-to-be-bruised throat.

He finally manages proper breath and his eyes dart up to see the scuffle unfolding. His mind doesn't paint a killer of Charlie, but it's Terezi what he worries for. He hesitates with rising up and doing something because... because what can he really do.

But look on with a dull horror that is.

Tackling someone with a spear when she has, at best, a piece of metal fashioned into a shiv... This is probably not one of Terezi's best ideas. At the very least, it isn't her most thought out. She rolls with the tiny woman, trying to grab at the spear to keep her from using it, but Terezi is still preoccupied with Fraysong being nearby.

"Kurloz, get out of here!" she shouts at him, hoping he'll take the order and run like he should be. If he isn't going to defend himself, then she has to make sure that he stays away from the fight. She's protected him this long. Losing him now would be heartbreaking.

When Terezi grabs for her spear, Charlie hangs on to it for dear life - trying to push back her guilt for the moment in favor of survival. Her legs kick out as she desperately struggles under the Troll, for now abandoning the idea of Kurloz completely.

She doesn't really want to kill him, anyway.

In the back of her mind, she's really glad he's getting away.

"Please-" Her voice comes out in a grunt. "Please, wait-"

And take that order he does. He turns sharp, fleeing the scene to disappear deeper in the store. He can see them in his mind as he goes, imagine what all could get occurrence as the strife motherfucking unfolds.

He can't just run. He has to find something what will help, something she can use...

Terezi is too distracted with making sure that Fraysong runs to keep a good hold on that spear, especially with the human girl kicking out at her. She catches a foot in the gut, and she lets go of the spear to roll away, winded. Clutching at her stomach, she scrambles to her feet and turns back towards Charlie.

"Wait for what?" she snaps angrily once she finds her breath again, shoulders hunched and ready for an attack. "For you to cull my friend when he's defenseless? Can't pick on someone who can actually fight back?"

As soon as she's got the opening, Charlie rolls back, pushing herself back up with the spear and standing on the defensive.

"I had to go after someone - I know what might happen if I don't! He was just...he was the first one I found...I didn't know he wouldn't fight back..." But the words die out past that point. No matter how she spins it, the Troll is right. She attacked someone defenseless, knowingly or not, and was going to try to kill him.

She shakes her head a little bit, trying to clear it.

"It doesn't matter what my intentions were, was it? What's done is done. This...." She steels herself. This is the point, isn't it? "This is your chance to leave, before I have to hurt you."

Terezi could very easily walk away here. The option is being given to her. She could take Initiate and go. But that doesn't guarantee that this woman won't hunt him down again, especially now that she knows that he won't fight back. And Terezi can't let that happen. She can't put him at risk again. He's already been hurt enough.

"If you want a fight, then you can fight me instead." She doesn't exactly have a weapon, but then again she probably doesn't need one. The human is tiny, and in Terezi's experience, they don't have the same level of ferocity. Or claws. "I'm not letting a monster like you leave here, just so you can come back and try to kill him later. I know how your type works."

The word falls hard upon her. 'Monster.' It cuts through everything else, past the guilt and through the tears, needling her fast and sharp and deep. Her hands clench around the spear.

"I'm not a monster," she breathes, something in her face hardening. A chord has been struck. "I'm not a monster, and you do NOT know anything about me."

Terezi can tell that she's getting under the woman's skin. That's fine by her. Angry people tend to make mistakes, and she's not afraid of some twig of a human. She just needs an opening to get in there and rip that spear out of her hands...

"I don't need to know anything else about you. If you're not a monster, then what? Do you have another word for going after defenseless people? Would you prefer coward? Bully? Fiend?" Terezi takes inventory of the things around her while she talks, trying to find something that might make a suitable distraction. The store has already been thoroughly picked over, but there's plenty of unhelpful things that have been left behind.

"I think monster fits well enough." She picks up some kind of sports ball lying discarded nearby and throws it at Charlie with all her strength. Then she charges the woman again, making a grab for the weapon.

By the time Terezi finishes talking, it's more than a little apparent that she's gotten Charlie upset. The girl is many things, but good at hiding her emotions is not one of those things - her lips set into a line, her doe eyes going narrow and cold. The ball comes at her hard and fast.

Fortunately for Charlie, something that she IS is good at surviving the unexpected.

She swings the spear like a bat, knocking the ball to one side. She catches the charge from the corner of her eye, but too late to react properly - for now, she simply moves with her momentum, pivoting on one foot and letting the force of her swing spin her around. She ducks down as she spins, moving the weapon down to keep it out of Terezi's hands - and also to try and sweep her legs from under her.

Terezi is nothing if not nimble. She had hoped that her opponent would be less prepared, but it doesn't slip her up to smell the ball go flying and the weapon swinging around at her again. She leaps over the stick, shifting and tucking into a roll to make herself as small of a target as possible.

She comes out of the roll in a crouch with barely a second to think about where to strike next. She wants to get the woman off balance, but more importantly, she knows that she needs to stay inside the spear's range of motion. At least if she wants to avoid getting a few holes in her.

It's become apparent that her opponent is not a very heavy thing, so she lunges for her legs again.

He hurries through the store, forgotten by those fighting out front. He searches the store as one great corpse to scavenge and pray that it somehow holds worth. He's making noise as he goes, but the fight drowns him out. Desperately, he looks around the store, already raided and well-picked over.

Until he finds something. Just one single thing like Messiahs laid it out for him. They did. They must have. It's what they've always done.

take faith...

He grabs the weapon and yanks it down. He knows how to use it. He knows how to use every weapon but a gun. In every single way he has killed...

He runs to the front of the store, going up the aisles without at all being seen.

In every single way he was trained to be a killer.

He raises the bow, bringing the arrow with it. Terezi is there. The other woman has a spear, all ready to bring it down...

Terezi is nimble - but so is Charlie. She manages to remove herself from the brunt of the troll's strike, keeping herself from getting knocked completely over; despite this, she still stumbles, winding up bracing herself with the butt of the spear. She looks down at the gangly figure beneath her, eyes wide...this may be her best opening.

Forcing her stance to steady, she raises the spear, spinning it point side down and at the ready.

"I'm sorry."

The position that Terezi puts herself in isn't the best. She had been counting on the woman to go down, perhaps to get her into another grappling match. But with the failed attempt at taking out her legs, Terezi finds herself in a precarious place at her opponent's feet.

Her gut instinct is to roll out of the way, but logically she knows that it won't stop the spear from skewering through her in some fashion. The only thing that she might prevent is gouging something serious--like her heart. She does it anyway, rolling to the side and bracing for the searing pain through something less vital--like her arm or shoulder, if she's lucky.

He fires. The arrow flies cleanly through the air and pierces through the neck.

He's frozen there with bow and arrow still raised as her death begins. In every single way he was trained for all this, but for how he is right now.

You killed a tribute.

You disobeyed.

Traitor.

The bow falls from his hands. He crumples down to his knees. There's so much blood, so much blood, he did this, he made this mess, he hurt a tribute, he killed...

His conditioning's worn off for a lot but not for this. Not for the thing what he was avoxed for. His mouth opens in utterly silent scream, his hands go up into his hair and around his horns, tugging and pulling as tremors rock through him in waves, all a thousand little pin pricks for a thousand wrongs, he disobeyed.

He rocks on the spot.

Charlie hesitates - just for a beat, a moment, a second of hesitation - but that second is more than enough. Suddenly, she can't breathe, eyes slowly sliding downward to spot the point sticking out below her chin. They slide back towards Terezi for a moment, a silent stare of disbelief that slowly glazes over.

She chokes, blood pouring out and down her front, warm and slick and pooling beneath her with each heartbeat.

By the time that heartbeat stops, she's fallen to the ground, spear still lightly clasped in her twitching hand.

Edited 2014-12-14 21:52 (UTC)

Terezi rolls away and the first thing that she realizes is that nothing hurts. There is no spear impaling her side, no blood gushing from any open wounds. She gets up quickly, just as Charlie's body hits the ground.

Everything feels like it's processing in slow motion. There is a body on the ground in front of her. There is an arrow through it's neck. Terezi turns to search for the one who fired it, but all that she finds is Kurloz on his knees and shaking.

She had told him to run. But he came back.

He came back, and he probably saved her life.

There's a moment where Terezi frowns back at the still bleeding body, an uncomfortable feeling in her chest... Then she's hurrying quickly over to Kurloz. She drops to her knees in front of him, reaching for his hands to pull them away from his horns.

"Kurloz, stop. Please... It's okay. I'm here. I'm okay." She pulls his hands down, squeezing them tight before letting go. She lifts them again to touch his face, fingers brushing against his cheeks. Trying to get him to listen to her. "You saved me. It's okay."

He flinches hard when she touches him, fingers twitching where they ain't in her grip. Otherwise, he don't hardly react.

But distantly, he can hear her. She says it's okay. It's not. It's not okay, he disobeyed, he killed a tribute. They're going to take him away, they're going to punish him, they're going to make correctional on his undoings, he shouldn't have done that, he should have let the woman ki--

His wide eyes dart up to her face. He feels her hands there, touching, holding so gentle. Terezi, Terezi. Don't touch tributes, you ain't supposed to touch...

His hands quake all violent as they rise up. He tries for her face and fails. They fall and grip tight on the sleeves she wears. His eyes stay on her as she struggles to pull him out of the consuming current.

Terezi, Terezi. Alive. Saved her. All for her, Terezi. Mutely, he mouths her name.

The way he flinches nearly breaks her heart. There's so much terror in him, over something like this. On one hand, she might understand that killing a Tribute isn't easy. But on the other hand, he's never reacted like this before. It only goes to show how much they've hurt him, and she can hardly stand it.

"I'm here, I'm here," she repeats, as his lips move and she realizes that he's trying to say her name. "It's okay. I promise. You're okay." She keeps up that steady mantra, pressing her forehead against his. She wishes that there was anything else that she could do for him, something to soothe the broken edges that the Capitol left behind when they ruined his mind.

"Thank you, Kurloz. Thank you for doing what you did. You're always..." Her words catch in her throat, feeling like the emotion that she's trying to convey is too large to pass. "You give so much for me. Thank you. I won't let anyone hurt you for this. I promise."

She doesn't know if she can keep that promise... She only knows that she can't let him be taken away from her again, no matter what.

It's not no kind of fast that he settles. He still shakes and shivers. He's still tense and terrified. But eventually, he doesn't need to rock so much. He can close his eyes, and even though the death is scoured there upon the unders of his eyelids, he at least ain't staring off and seeing it there.

But gratitude, thankfulness. Being all to say like he's any kind of good. Like she can stop any of what is to come, neverminding the punishment what is most certain and sure for this.

It's the kindness what guts him most.

When at last he can, he throws his arms around her proper and stay there until the quiet of his shuddering breath.

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But you said it often, before you were lost, that it's only a day.

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DEATH

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