Fireheart | Raven Reyes [O.H.]

4 | shark bait

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chapter four!
SHARK BAIT
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WITH JASPER GONE, the camp is even more on edge than usual. Ares feels the tension even before he steps back out into the sunlight. It's a tangible, living thing, snaking around the ninety-nine delinquents at the camp and gnawing at them until they begin to fidget. Even Ares finds himself restless at this new threat.

Lightly prodding his newly-patched nose and wincing, he stumbles out of the dropship while Clarke gathers supplies on the second level. Monty is busy fixing one of the broken light structures on the side of the wall— something that intrigues Ares, but not enough for him to ask for a tutorial on how to do. For now, his concern lies in recovering the weapon he'd lost during his fight with Murphy.

Every step sends a burst of dull pain up into his skull, but it's not as terrible as the initial blow had been. Ares, hands in his pockets, pretends not to notice the eyes that drift to him when he emerges. Always act careless. That had been his first coping mechanism during his first interaction with his peers after being incarcerated; the Ares Ortega who had entered that impromptu Earth Skills class a few weeks ago had not been the same one who'd been arrested. This one gets stares wherever he goes. This one has a reputation that had spread around the Ark like wildfire.

Step two: make them fear you a little. Ares doesn't let it be known that his face is currently pulsing with pain. Instead, he allows a little smirk to lift up the corner of his lips. Not a smirk of kindness, but one of danger. Of chaos. Hinting at the uncontrollable fire coursing through his veins.

He catches the eye of one girl approximately seventeen with her ebony hair pulled back in two thick braids. Ares winks. The girl scowls at him even as a blush tints her bronze cheeks pink, which she tries to disguise as being from the cold once people's incredulous eyes drift to her.

Ares is snapped out of his stupor by someone's fist hitting him in the arm. "If I didn't know any better, I'd have thought you were a masochist."

He turns to see Nate beside him, adjusting his gray hat over his short, black hair. His lips are pursed in a frown. At what, Ares isn't completely sure, but the way his former cellmate's brown eyes are skittering around the camp doesn't make him feel any calmer.

"Who says I'm not?"

Nate turns and lifts a brow at him. "Me." He grabs hold of Ares' hand and slaps something into his palm, startling the latter boy enough that he jolts. "Here— I think this is yours."

Ares uncurls his fingers to find his knife resting in his hand. It's the one he'd kept in his pocket until he'd lost it while tumbling down that short cliff, the familiar pattern of twine around the handle marking it as his. Somehow, Nate had managed to grab it before someone else had.