One Shots

9. [Home With The Red Stripe]

Ever since they survived the Games, he and Rhea had been in hot water.

Yuya sat there, replaying what had happened in the arena prior to when they were taken out. It was quite a blur since at those moments he had been running on just pure adrenaline, but he remembered it, even if it was only vaguely.

Both of them were bloodied and beaten, the only two left in the entire arena who weren't dead. Yuya didn't want to kill Rhea, and Rhea was too incapacitated to try to kill him, so his solution was for the both of them to kill themselves by drinking hydrogen peroxide together to ensure that there would be no winner that year. Before they could do so, both were crowned the victors of the 74th games and rescued. Rhea had collapsed from blood loss, and apparently, Yuya suffered from hysteria until he was knocked out.

The train was chugging along the track, the green fields changing into that of stone ruins. The inside was silent, since after all, it was just the two of them on the train ride there to New Heartland Province.

He looked over to Rhea, who was sitting on the opposite side across from him. Her short black hair framed her face, and she was dressed in a black short-sleeved shirt with a white denim vest with black jeans. A red bandana was tied in the belt loops of her jeans. She looked a lot like how she did when she volunteered in place of the person she said was her brother, except for the large scar over the right side of her face. Her mechanical eye flitted about towards the window, watching the scenery outside.

"Neo Heartland Province, last stop," The train conductor said over the intercom, sounded quite disgusted as he did so. Neo Heartland Province was regarded as the slums out of the twelve provinces, and from what Yuya could see, it was...not as great as where he came from.

Rhea got up and walked out of the train, a dark look on her face at the sound of the voice on the intercom. Yuya followed after her, not wanting to be left behind on the train when it began to move again.

The moment both of them set foot on the train, they were met by a huge crowd surrounding the station. Almost unanimously, the entire crowd began to shout Rhea's name, and from what Yuya could see, many of them were crying.

Rhea looked genuinely shocked, but then she smiled ever so slightly and raised her fist in the air. The rest of the crowd followed suit with a loud "HURRAH!"

A little girl even shorter than Rhea climbed onto the platform and ran towards Rhea, her red hair just as short as her's, knocking Rhea over onto the ground in a hug.

"RHEAAAAAAAAAAAA!" She yelled as she did so.

"Silica, you're crushing me," Rhea said as she managed to sit up.

"I MISSED YOU!" She exclaimed as she clung onto Rhea's shoulders. Silica eventually let her go, and Rhea just stood back up, ruffling Silica's hair so that it stood up in multiple directions.

"I missed you too," was all she replied back.

Rhea looked around, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion as her eyes swept over the now dispersing crowd.

"Where's Yusio?" She asked Silica. "He's not here..."

"Oh, he's with Sora!" Silica chirped up. "Someone, I think it was Brax or maybe Joey, needed a fast surgery I think. For an app-app-en-dak."

"Appendix?"

"Yeah! Appendix! Yusio was really panicky when he came in, so he told me to tell you that he would be here as fast as he could." She looked around, a confused look on her face. "I think it took too long though..."