Worth it | F.O.

XXI

Nivea's first kill was someone insignificant. 

And, yet, it mattered to her. She believed the least she could do, killing them as she was, was to remember who, how, and the struggle they had given to her, if they had been the slightest bit of an opponent. But the truth was more complicated because her first kill had done something to her, something she didn't want to admit even to herself for it would be no better than treason. 

Nivea had started out strong with that gong still ringing in her ears as she sprinted forward to the closest and first thing she saw that could be used, if utilized the right way, as a weapon. On her every side she was surrounded by much the same scene as others sprinted to what they believed to be insurance of safety. However, unlike her, they clearly had not been taught a most valuable lesson for each and every one passed by a multitude of weapons sinking into mud. So, as where Nivea knelt briefly to scoop something heavy and metal from the ground, nearly 16 others made no pause with a one track mindset blinding them to an easier survival had they dared to expand their horizons. 

She wished she did, that she would be given such a luxury even in such a world, but when the opportunity presented itself in the form of a boy darting right into her path with little to no eyes directed their way to witness, Nivea could not afford to hesitate. With a strong step forward and a hand grasping the back of his jacket with her other shifting its secure hold, District 9's beloved male tribute tumbled back into the mud. When he looked up to the owner of the shadow looming threateningly over him posing nothing short of one, his soft features slackened in shock, disbelief, and, perhaps worst of all, terror. 

The boy, 17, gasped, his hands working frantically to clutch at the unforgiving mud beneath him, trying desperately, and failing just the same, to get away. He knew, there was no doubt about that. And with that, she knew that even if she had been considering letting him believe she was still an ally to be trusted, the option had dissipated with the single shift of his features into something so terribly twisted, staring back at her and screaming every horrible thing in the silence. 

Nine had been defenseless and when he spoke, his voice was so choked with fear it seemed he could barely get the words out, his eyes on what he now knew to deal the killing blow on his own skull, “P-please! No no no -” His pleas were weak, cowardly, “I - We're al-allies…”

Clouds rolled in to sadden Nivea's brown, merciless eyes, a small smile frightening the boy like it had Crop when she first met him. Her head tilted and the smallest of shakes, a sad yet unyielding denial, struck the boy just as her weapon did when she lifted it into the air with the sun glinting off its metal exterior, the water within sloshing ever-so-slightly. Poisonous words she believed held all the meaning in the world rolled off her tongue as gravity claimed it for its own, its helping hand guiding the killing blow to the boy just as much as she and never would she have been able to comprehend the magnitude of the boys fear with the last he heard, felt, saw, and cried, “For the greater good.”

With a resounding crack, his skull had shattered and she had once more been sprayed in the blood of another, warming what Seven had not managed. And with it somewhere deep within what had remained of her heart, her soul, her innocence, Nivea could have sworn it did as well for it fell into a million thousand pieces, broken beyond repair and never to be hoped to recover again. Nine's arms fell limp into the cold mud already tinting his skin a sickening blue mimicking that of Pandora's tainted through immoral means and Nivea stood huffing for a moment with that water bottle still clutched dripping in her grasp, relishing in the last twitch of a finger before all fell still. It was safe to say, to her at least, with his head still pouring blood and his eyes staring unseeing to the overcast sky with not a pulse thrumming beneath his skin, that he was dead.