Before I Go (Keagon)

North Clarke had just finished at the stone quarry she worked out, which was annoyingly placed as far as possible from her house. She didn't particularly want to go back, as always, but her mother had instructed her to come home as soon as possible. A pathetic attempt at happy families again, where they would all be forced to sit around the table and eat the proper meal her mother could sometimes afford once every month or so. North didn't even know why she still lived with her family sometimes, they all hated her. Then again, it wasn't as if working at the stone quarry brought in masses amount of money - and she certainly didn't have any sort of significant other to leech off. Stuck.

With a sigh, North realised there wasn't any way she could get home in a time her mother would deem acceptable unless she took a short cut through the place people trained. That's where most kids eligible for the Games went, but North never bothered. Her siblings and cousins had always made a point of telling her she wouldn't last five minutes if she was ever "Reaped". Her big, bad cousin was absolutely slaughtered, so what hope did she have? The runt of District Two? As usual, I'll just cram it all in like two days before the Reaping... she thought to herself, a bit nervous. Maybe she should have trained earlier. Then again, it wasn't as if it mattered. Someone would volunteer in a snap, most people she knew would jump at the chance. Unless they'd be glad to see her go... was she an embarrassment? No. She was looking too much into it... wasn't she?

Suddenly, North realised she'd actually been walking quite speedily as she her paranoid thoughts swam around in her head, and she could already hear people training. Loudly. So loud in fact that she was right in the way of...

"I'm so sorry!" she yelped, falling to the ground as she was barrelled over by a burly girl she'd been in school with. How embarrassing. She crawled backwards, desperate to get away - not knowing she was just in the way of people.

((That way he can just trip over her, or get mad she's there or... anything ^_^))

This was going to be a close one. Keagon had known he was getting into a close fight when he’d agreed to spar a guy a year older than him, but if his brother had been able to do that at this age, you can bet Keagon was going to be able to do it too. Or he would go down trying. Swordsmanship was one of his better skills, at least; it had to be, considering swords were found in just about every years’ Games. Keagon preferred a spear, but for direct combat with another person (which the Games could easily come down to), a sword was more useful. The world was a distorted flurry of sliver clashing against silver, as Keagon danced around his oppenent, just barely missing a nice scrape across the face. The swords he and his opponent were using were blunt, but they could still do some serious damage if they weren’t careful. Suddenly finding himself on the defensive, Keagon began to back away from his opponent as they fought. No way. No way was he going to lose this. With a newfound determination Keagon…

Tripped?!

With a startled cry, he fell over a person who was sitting on the floor , and just barely rolled out of the way of a hit that could have easily shattered the bones in his arm. Letting lose a string of choice curse words, Keagon pulled himself of the ground, shoved his opponent away from him, then turned on the girl. “WHAT THE HELL?” He screamed at her. “ARE YOU TRYING TO GET SOMEONE KILLED? HUH?” A bit ironic, really, that Keagon was worried about this considering he was training so that he could, in fact, kill other people. But he wasn’t so much angry about the possibility of someone getting hurt as he was annoyed by this girl’s stupidity. What sort of idiot wandered through the Careers training area if they didn’t know what they were doing (which this girl clearly didn’t)? And, upon closer inspection, it seemed that the girl was actually much older than Keagon, which in his eyes just made her even more of an idiot. She was lucky she hadn’t gotten seriously injured. The Careers took as many precautions as they could to ensure no one would get maimed, but injuries happened all the time. There was only so much you could do with the safer practice weapons before you needed to use the real thing, and most Careers outgrew those really young.

Letting out an exasperated sigh, Keagon offered a hand to the girl. “Well, come on then.” The irritation in his voice was quite obvious, but there was no point in leaving her on the ground where she’d just be in the way. And as much as he would have liked to punch the girl in the face at the moment (Keagon’s default response to just about everyting), the only socially acceptable thing to do in this situation was escort her away from the training and make sure she knew to never, ever, walk through there again. That part, at least, was something Keagon felt he could handle. Once he’d given her what he considered a reasonable amount of time to get up, Keagon made his way through the area, shoving the occasional (younger) Career out of his way until he was clear of the fighting. If the girl hadn’t managed to keep up, that was her problem. She was lucky Keagon had even done this much for her, really.

As North was crawling backwards, not looking where she was going and assuming she was safely out of harm's way, she felt a kick at her side and looked up, annoyed and forgetting it was entirely her fault. All she saw was a fairly young boy falling over her, sword in hand. She shielded her face with her hands as soon as she could, but luckily, the boy didn't land on her and neither did his sword. That was a close one... she thought to herself quickly, as the boy rolled out of the way of a hit by his opponent. Oops. Guess that's my fault...

She opened her mouth to apologise, only to hear obscenities spew out of his mouth. She kept trying to talk, getting angrier and angrier as she couldn't. Really, such a child shouldn't speak that way to anyone. Where had he learned such language? When he finished, he offered her his hands and North just raised her eyebrows, shocked. He treats her like that and expects her to be grateful to him, as if he was doing her a favour? Well, she wouldn't have it.

Smacking his hand away, she got up, wishing she was taller and bigger so she could intimidate him - but her slight frame and five feet in height was incapable of doing that. After that, he just went. Toddled off as if nothing had happened, occasionally pushing younger children out of his way. Well, that was it. She was normally rather quiet and just accepted things as they came - but not this time. Not to a child.

North stormed after him through the forbidden training area that was so often overlooked, walking brusquely and shooting apologetic grins at the younger ones the other Career had pushed away. She'd wait until he stopped before yelling at him in return, demanding why he would ever use such language and push kids over for no reason. Unfortunately, she'd clean forgotten why he was in such a mood in the first place, and that it was entirely her fault.

((Eh, this was crappy >_> Sorry!))

If you asked Keagon, letting slip a few curse words was not all that extreme of a response to almost getting one’s arms crushed. Especially considering the fact that he’d picked up said curse words from the very Careers he was currently surrounded by, so it wasn’t like he’d said anything out of the ordinary. And to top it all off, the only curse word he’d actually said to the older girl’s face was “hell,” if you could even consider that a curse word. The rest had been directed at the sword that had almost shattered Keagon’s arm, thanks to Miss Crawling-Around-on-the-Floor here. Furthermore, Keagon felt that the two things he’d yelled at here were not entirely uncalled for either. It wasn’t like he’d stood there for ten minutes shouting in her face. Keagon had said two things, quite an impressive achievement considering he’d almost had his arm broken into tiny little pieces.

So needless to say the fifteen year old was offended when the girl refused his help up. It wasn’t so much that she had refused it, as the way she’d gone about it, smacking his hand out of the way. Whatever. If she wanted to stay on the ground and get herself chopped in half, that was fine with Keagon. Apparently she didn’t, though, because she at least had the sense to pick herself off the ground and follow him out of the training area. It was lucky he didn’t bother looking behind him, because had Keagon seen her shooting the younger kids apologetic looks he would have knocked her back over and left her to navigate her own way through the fighting. There was a food chain here, and it was simply a fact of life that older career could rough the younger ones up a bit. Goodness knows Keagon had gotten his fair share of ‘attention’ from older careers; he still did, as he was only fifteen and still had a good ways to go before he was considered one of the top dogs around here. But it was just a social norm around here, and the last thing the younger kids needed was sympathy. There would be no sympathy in the Hunger Games, and if they couldn’t handle a small shove they sure as hell wouldn’t survive past the bloodbath. So Keagon was actually doing the younger kids a favor.

Upon finally reaching the edge of the area, and therefore successfully evading the rest of the fighting, Keagon turned to see if the girl had managed to keep up with him, tapping his foot impatiently, his arms crossed across his chest in an unspoken demand for an explanation. Did Keagon care that she was older than him? Not at all; clearly he was the more skilled and more intelligent of the two, and seeing as she had almost gotten his arm broken, Keagon felt as though he deserved an explanation.