Who | Haruto and Nitou
What | Two wizards just trying to survive and possibly accidentally being cute for the Capitol viewership.
When | Right at the end of Week 1 and the beginning of Week 2.
Where | The temporary shelter Haruto and Nitou eked out in a quieter part of the space station.
Warnings/Notes | Talk of death, loss, and violence. Business as usual for the Arena.


So this Arena thing? It sucked. It really sucked. Nitou had figured that out within the first few minutes of the Cornucopia, but once again, he'd created opportunity out of danger, and he'd come away relatively unscathed and with a crate of supplies. This had made it much better at first, even if he decided he could never eat rhubarb again after this. But turns out the syringes in there, the ones Nitou had lost the labels to, were full of neurotoxin. They were not, in fact, future medicine. And so he'd accidentally killed Gary, and even if it could have been considered a mercy killing considering the shape the other guy was in, he still felt awful over that.

The worst part of it was Chimera. Normally, Nitou didn't really mind the monster's presence--Chimera was a dangerous opportunity for adventure like you wouldn't believe--but the creature had been so hungry, it was getting harder to handle his demands for food. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before Chimera got fed up, ate Nitou himself, and then set off looking for more food on his own. Nitou wondered if the Gamemakers would allow the monster to rampage for a while, or if they'd even be able to handle him once he got loose.

He kind of hoped they couldn't.

The closest thing to a bright spot Nitou had at this point was that he'd managed to hook up with Haruto for a bit of a team-up, even if Haruto kept stopping him from trying to feed Chimera. It was probably a good thing from some moral standpoint, even if it was getting annoying. Still, he liked having Haruto around. It was just like being back home! Kind of. And he knew he could trust the guy; that was a plus. Yet Nitou felt kind of guilty about wanting to stick close to Haruto, if only because he knew part of his desire to stick close was that if anything happened to draw Dragon out, he'd be there with a bib on. This was just the sort of environment that seemed designed to draw out despair, and Haruto was already pretty beat up. Nitou knew that in the shape he was in and the shape Haruto was in, if it came down to a fight, he'd win. He'd so win. Then Chimera would eat Dragon, and everything would be okay. Kind of. Sort of. People came back from the dead here in these arena things, right? You die in the Arena, you don't die in real life?
How did that even work?

But for now, he'd try to get through this with his friend and try very hard not to think about trying to eat Haruto. Instead, they could eat the tiny, kind of nasty potatoes he'd found while scrounging before returning to the spot where he'd left the other wizard. "Hey! Haruto!" He grinned, trying not to look as exhausted as he felt as he held up the potatoes in question. "It's lunchtime!"