"Yeah," Vashe said. "You surprised me. I think you're pretty lethal. I'm not going to be. I have... other plans."
Thoughts of sabotage ran through her brain. She did not know what kind of arena they were going into, but she'd find kinks in the works. She also wanted to write the word "PEACE" somehow into a hillside or flat area through some sort of means... placing rocks, setting a fuse and making fire - just something to get the attention of those people behind the areal cameras. Just... lots of defiant things. She knew her end would not be pleasant for that, but she didn't care.
She put a hand on Luke's shoulder. "You do whatever you have to do, okay, kid? I won't judge you. I won't judge any of you, even if you end up killing me."
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Icaria, meanwhile, had gone to the medical room. No one was in at this time but her. She was "getting supplies for the transport." It happened that occasionally, some idiot crewmember was injured somehow or some Tribute hurt themselves trying to make a break for it. She hummed as she retrieved her "decoys" from a secret pocket of her work-jumpsuit - little vials filled with a kind of distilled liquor that looked like morphling, another that looked like another common, powerful drug. Untrained people usually thought their batches had gone bad when they'd discovered the fakes. She varied it up, too, never taking *all* of the expensive drugs for her black market and switching around vials in the batches. She took her future profits and slipped them into the secret pocket. She then got to the business of what she was supposed to be doing - fetching bandages and headache pills as was allotted to her mission.
As she made her way to the cargo storage for the hovercraft hanger, she expected she might meet some old "friends" and partners in crime.
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Gamemaker Shadow Felix observed a small creature in a terriarum. "Good," she said, "Very nice." The animal was very like a lizard, but made a little flaming puff of breath. It was also brightly colored. It had webbed skin between its forelimbs and hindquarters, "for gliding" the muttation-crew explained. It was like a miniature dragon.
"Just as ordered," the Head Gamemaker went on. This was to be the first arena that she designed. Her background in working on the "Myth of Maven" videogame series - popular in the Capitol, unknown in the Districts save 1, where it was also played, and 3, where the technical components for it were crafted - was showing.
The Tributes were like characters to Shadow Felix. Not people, merely characters. Part of the reason why she was chosen for the task from among the Gamemaking crew (the career she took after writing videogame scenarios landed her the attention for the job), was because she was uniquely "playfully sadistic" someone once said.