The 125th Annual Hunger Games

Chapter 39

The first thing that Clem registered was the banging against the glass off to his right.

He couldn't hear what Mako was shouting, but he was sure that whatever he was saying wasn't good because Mako kept trying to break the glass.

That had Clem more worried than the was concerned over the boy with the glowing name. Though seconds later, he figured out why Mako was so desperate to get Clem out of the enclosure with Crimsyn.

Well, given the body that lay by Crimsyn's feet, still scarcely breathing, it would've been stupid of Clem to not consider him a threat.

Clem and Grey barely had time to shift apart from each other as Crimsyn zoomed towards them, running between the two.

He moved with an inhumane speed, slowly shifting Grey and Clem into opposite sides of the enclosure, knocking them down in turn so he could go terrorize the other.

It took the two tributes a hot second of taking a beating before they clicked into how they had been fighting before, though Grey was obviously more distracted than he was upstairs as they danced around Lark's body.

  The chakram bounced against the glass with musical pings as either Grey or Clem snatched it out of the air to get a swipe in on Crimsyn.

Crimsyn himself was a lot faster than Stark was, so the amount of stamina it took to not only keep up, but stay ahead of Crimsyn's attacks was wearing a slow hole into both Grey and Clem's energy.

At one point, Grey tripped on what seemed like nothing, stumbling head over heels, he was hardly able to come up from a roll, needing a second to recover, but Crimsyn was already there.

Desperate, Clem, who held the chakram, lunged between Grey and the nunchucks, locking in a tight hold with the boy, the metal knives from the nunchucks scraping on the metal of the chakram.

On a particularly loud screech, Clem noticed the way Crimsyn reacted to the noise, as though it were like a searing burn.

Was he sensitive to noise?

It would explain how he would seem to slow down when the chakram was bouncing around.

"Grey! Get your knife and scrape it against the glass!" Clem shouted, keeping his trembling muscles locked in the current stalemate with Crimsyn.

Crimsyn scowled, and tried to reach Grey, who scrambled out from under Clem's feet to retrieve the fallen blade from a couple feet away, but Clem refused to let the hold slip.

As soon as the loud, teeth jarring screech split through the air, Crimsyn winced, having to pull back to clutch his ears.

Clem took the opportunity to get the boy as far away from him as possible, and kicked him in the gut, sending him falling to the ground.

A tiny whistle hummed past Clem's ears, and he hardly had time to turn his head before the ace of spades blossomed on Crimsyn's forehead.

Clem shivered as Grey walked past him, glaring at Crimsyn as he walked past his corpse, stopping and bending down as soon as he reached Lark.

Clem followed, wanting to offer Grey as much support for this as he could given he knew it wouldn't be easy to go through what he just did, from fighting through whatever trauma he had to kill his father and being free of his overbearing strict abusive nature, on top of losing the person who first showed that someone actually cared, Clem knew he probably wouldn't be able to withstand that himself without breaking into a million pieces.

Plus the fact that Clem was actually taller than someone else for a change made him automatically more inclined to be protective over them.

Grey knelt down next to Lark's side, holding his hand as the two merely stared blankly at each other.