"I believe that is the next town," boomed the voice of the truck. Katniss pried her face off of the window and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. Travelling by vehicle sure made things a lot easier. She looked up past the long hood and saw the tiny lumps of buildings on the horizon, slowly swelling into view. The sun was slowly crawling down the sky, but would still guarantee a few hours of light.

That should be enough to get in and out, if I'm careful. Of course, I might want to take the time to convince Optimus to take me to the town after this one, too. It's nice to cover ground without actually having to walk, for once.

Katniss nodded- though she was unsure if the truck could actually see her do so- and nestled her head back into the window. Even just a few minutes of rest felt so wonderful, which is precisely why she was very annoyed when the cabin suddenly jolted to the left, then swung back right, accompanied by the screaming of the big rig's tires.

"What the hell?!" she screamed, leaping up from her seat.

"There was a man on the road," explained Optimus. "I swerved to miss him. I think he was trying to get our attention."

"Hey! Uh, hello!" called a voice from outside. "Mister Trucker Man, hello?"

"I'll look into it," growled Katniss. She snagged her bow from the back seat and strung an arrow lightly, quickly dropping a hand to open the door before returning it to the weapon and hopping out of the truck. She scanned left and right for the man who she had heard, but saw nothing.

"Oh, you're not a Trucker Man at all, are ya?" said a voice from behind. Katniss wheeled in place and found her bow pointed at stomach-height of a very tall, lanky fellow. He wore a long red duster- not unlike the one that vampire wore, but he certainly didn't make it look quite so sinister. Despite his size, he looked very, very young, with bright green eyes and a youthful spiky haircut.

"No need to go pointing that thing at me," he said, gently pushing Katniss' aim away from his vital organs. "I ain't lookin' for trouble."

Katniss frowned as she placed her arrow back in her quiver.

"Then what are you looking for?"

"You guys looked like you were headed up the road. I thought I'd save myself some time by catching a ride with you into town."

"So you can try and get the coin before me?"

"Oh, no! I'm just trying to keep moving, that's all. I really couldn't care less if I won or not."

Katniss looked back at the truck, then up at the sun, then down at the road leading into the town.

"Fine. Hop in," she sighed.

"Aw, thanks!" he cried, wrapping his arms around her in a forceful embrace. "You don't know how much this means to me!"

"No," she coughed. "I think- ngh!- I do."

The man eventually set her back down, and she crawled back up into the driver's seat while he swung himself in on her right.

"So, you know how to drive one of these things?" he asked innocently.

"Nope," Katniss grunted, as Optimus Prime began to accelerate back down the road.

"Oh, it drives itself! That's pretty cool."

Katniss was not a fan of the man's antics.

"Just who are you, exactly?"

The man blinked nervously, tapping his index fingers together.

"Umm… nobody special," he mumbled.

Katniss shook her head. "Come on, spit it out. Everybody here's somebody."

"No, I really can't tell you. It's kinda dangerous."

"Can you tell me anything about yourself?"

The man stroked his hairless chin. "Well… I'm like a hunter of peace, if you will. One who chases the elusive mayfly known as love." He punctuated the statement with a few suggestive movements of the eyebrow. Katniss placed a hand to her head and lamented for those who tolerated hitchhikers on a regular basis. When she looked back up, she found the man had slumped into a very sudden slumber, snoring quietly.

I'm glad I'll be able to ditch this freeloader once we get to town. I'm not sure how long I'd be able to put up with him.

After another five minutes of driving, they passed a sun-faded sign declaring that they were always welcome in Terre Sombre, and another two minutes after that they rolled into the parking lot of a quiet-looking bed and breakfast on the edge of town. Katniss opened her door slowly and crept out of the truck, hoping to avoid waking the man, who she knew would probably follow her around if he was conscious.

"Okay, I'm going to go ask for directions in there," she said to the chromed grille before her. "But things might not go so well, so I need you to stay here in case I need to bail out and head further into town, got it?"

"Understood," said the truck.

Katniss acknowledged his understanding with a nod and headed for the door. As she stepped inside, something immediately seemed amiss- no one was there. If the town was really populated as the other ones had seemed to be, a place like this should've at least had some staff on-duty at this time of day.

"Um… hello?" she called, doing exactly what her survival instincts told her not to do. She suppressed them even further when she shouted "HELLO?" again. She received no answers.

This doesn't look good. How am I supposed to figure out where the bank is? If this was a smaller town like Northville or Southville- yes, those are stupid names- It'd be easy to find, but this one's a lot bigger. That, and this place being so quiet seems a little suspicious. Where'd everybody go? Maybe they're in the bathroom?

She made up her mind that the place could not be empty, and resolved to search a little before giving up. Katniss had stayed in hotels when her Victory Tour made stops in District 1 and the Capitol, and knew that it was common practice that the front desk held keys to access the rest of the rooms. She located the desk, tucked into a nook on her left, and was beginning to approach when she smelled it. Blood.

Aw, crap.

Katniss cautiously made her way closer to the desk, and just as she had suspected, the scent grew stronger. She peeked over the edge and found the hostess very dead on the floor, with a large hole torn into her stomach five long gashes across her face.

"Aw, crap," she whispered aloud.

Knowing that this was the signal to get the hell out of Dodge, she sprinted back for the door, nearly knocking it off of its hinges as she shot through. She scrambled to Optimus' driver's side and began to fumble at the handle.

"What is the matter?" asked the truck.

"People in there are dead," she barked. "We need to get out of here."

Optimus opened his door for her, and she threw herself into the seat. The man across from her was still asleep, which she was thankful for.

"Should we move to the next town, then?"

"No," replied Katniss. "We can still take care of things here, if we're careful. That's just one hotel, right? There were bound to be enemies here, anyway," she said, though she still felt uncertain. "If we can just find the bank, we can get in and out pretty fast. Then we won't have to worry about why people are dead."

That's right, she thought, attempting to reassure herself. After all, they only killed one person. Compared to the other horrible things I've seen here, that's not so bad, right? And if they've already passed through and gotten the coin before us, we're really not in their way. We're fine, I'm fine. The team needs me to come through on this.

Optimus fired his engine back up and trundled out of the parking lot, rolling deeper into the town. Unlike the little dust-ridden collections of old wooden buildings she had seen so far, this place was a touch more modern, and certainly bigger. It had paved streets, and brick buildings, but even those couldn't hide the fact that just beyond lay that huge desert, smothering the land with a hot and heavy blanket until it suffocated. Katniss warily peered out of the windows of the air-conditioned cabin as they rolled down the streets, and began to lose her faith in the explanation she had crafted. The town was silent- no people walked down the streets, or fled as Optimus approached. None pulled shutters closed as they had in Northville.

"Turn here," the girl instructed as they approached the intersection of a two-lane-wide street. Multiple businesses ran up and down the road, indicating that it was probably a major thoroughfare. If the bank was going to be anywhere, it would be there. Optimus obliged, and they made a left, only to come to a screeching halt. In front of them, strewn across the road, were seven wrecked cars, arranged like a barricade. They could not drive around them.

"Hmm," grunted Optimus. "This seems suspicious."

"Everything here seems suspicious," Katniss concurred.

"I could transform and step across," he offered.

Katniss thought about it for a moment. He'd definitely wake up their hitchhiker if he did so, and the last thing she needed at the moment was a bumbling idiot like him following her around as she tried to be stealthy and expedient.

"No. I'll go on ahead. Just stay there."

"Very well, then. Be careful."

"I will be."

Katniss stepped out and vaulted over the barricade of vehicles, finding that a few more abandoned cars had been strewn up and down the street. The sun hung low enough to catch on their windshields, creating a storm of glares for her to press onward through. She passed a diner, vacant; a general store, empty. The air was still except for one constant, pulsing sound that she realized were her own breaths.

You're terrified. You know this is a bad idea. Why do you keep going forward?

Because I know the stakes. If I can't help my team collect the coins, then we're going to have two Great Old Ones against us. That's what Twilight told us, right? That's something bigger than just myself, something that impacts a lot of people. I can't let concern for myself get in the way of that.

Something made sharp noises under her boot. It was broken glass, shattered out of the barbershop to her right. While there were no people visible from where she stood, there must have been some in the store at some point, as their blood was splattered all over the walls, and through the door, and out into the street in a splotchy trail. Katniss let her eyes follow the trail with morbid fascination until it culminated in a small pile of corpses leaned up against an abandoned car.

No… someone actually took the time…

Her eyes floated to the other side of the street, where several other businesses had been ruined in similar ways. Next to each scattered car, another set of bodies. Women, children, men.

… They actually killed everyone… everyone in this town. That's not even the objective, why- why would they do something like that?

Another fragment of glass crunched behind her.

"Hello, there, friend," said a voice from the same place. "Missing someone?"

Katniss' heart accelerated further. She felt the familiar sensation of adrenaline surging out into her body.

"Missing… someone?" she asked, carefully planning how to draw her knife in the shortest time possible.

"I probably know where they are." It was a girl's voice, not much older than her by the sound of it. It did not sound particularly spiteful, either, but the calm tenderness was lost in the sea of horror that surrounded it. "I'll help you find them, if you like. How do they look? Ugly? Pretty?"

"I'm… not missing anyone," whispered Katniss, trying her luck by reaching for her knife's handle. She spun and drew the weapon, bringing it up in a coiled-spring arm, held in an obvious manner to inform her assailant that she was armed.

The girl that crouched in the bloody glass now in front of Katniss was not what the tribute had pictured to fit with the voice. A grey sneak suit festooned with circulatory fluids clung close to her body, which had been seemingly chiseled to some halfway point between a feminine ideal and utilitarian fitness. Long, dark hair framed a pale, intense face. Tattoos crawled from the corners of her eyes down her cheeks, but as she breathed, the ink pulsated and moved, drawing lazy, smoke-like patterns past her mouth. The mouth itself was perfectly-shaped, but between her uncolored lips, rows of razor-like fangs shone in the fading light. Her nose was similarly inhuman, not unusual in size but in shape, with a tip that tilted up flatly as if to evoke the snout of a wolf. Along the straps and belts of the sneak suit, two compact, plastic-framed sub-machine guns hung idly, and would continue to if the amount of blood that traveled from her silver nails up to her elbows was any indication.

"You're not missing anyone?" she asked, her voice still sounding not the least bit demented, even as her sharp-looking tongue involuntarily slipped out from between her lips, tested the air, and then retracted back behind her fangs. "How can that be? I was pretty sure I had nearly… run out."

"What are you?" gasped Katniss, feeling the same fear she had when she had encountered the Capitol's terrible mutations in arenas and out- that something horribly unnatural had found her, and she had no idea what it would do next.

"I'm cursed," spat the girl, rising to her full height, which was not much taller than Katniss. "Cursed with flawed perfection."

Katniss knew that the longer she could get her to talk, the longer she would have to plan how to beat her, so she replied with "Flawed perfection?"

"I made it sound a little more poetic than it is," she sighed. "I used to be normal, ugly, like you."

The remark forced Katniss to stop her planning. She had never been particularly concerned with her physical appearance, and had even felt a little violated as the Capitol would pretty her up. But she hadn't ever thought she was particularly unattractive, either. So why had the girl so quickly pegged her as ugly? Katniss was unsure of why the thought had occurred to her, as that was the last sort of thing she would ever think about, until she realized that the girl had said it before, with some emphasis.

Ugly or Pretty, she asked… but what does that mean?

"Back then, I only knew… just a fraction of what was happening. Then they made me pretty-"

There she goes again.

"And I was an idiot… but now… now I have it the worst. Special. And do you know what that means?"

"N-no."

"I can't feel. I can't feel anything anymore. It's all a haze, a blur. And the only thing that makes it better…" She lifted a hand to her own face, clenched the fingers, and raked her nails across, creating a familiar set of gashes. Her tattoos bubbled out of the way as the nails dragged past, and a sick, razor-filled smile spread across her face. She breathed heavily for a moment, her eyes rolling up in apparent ecstasy.

"Is when… I can hurt something," she gasped.

"Is that why… you did this?" asked Katniss.

The girl lowered her hand, her own blood dripping to the ground slowly as her smile disappeared. "Feeling… that's what makes us human. Look at me, nothing's human anymore. Too perfect, too cruel. I can only be human now if I feel. And if this is how I have to do it… then that's what has to be done. I can't let myself slip any further away."

"You're insane," hissed Katniss.

"No, we're all insane," growled back the girl. "Every day we make little choices to hurt someone else so that we feel better. How many people get hurt in one lifetime, like that? More than in this little city, that'll be gone in five or six hours when someone wins, right? No, if you have to call me insane, it's so that you feel better about yourself."

Is she right? Katniss thought. No, I don't have time to think about that. She's crazy and I need to get her out of my way.

"Regardless of whether you're insane or not, you're either going to let me get that coin and get out of town, or die," growled Katniss. "So make it easy on yourself when choosing."

"Easy?" laughed the girl. "Things were never easy for Tally-wa. If you put up a fight, I'll feel that much more!"

She pounced toward Katniss, swinging her clawed hands through the air. Katniss juked out of the way, seeing an opportunity. When the girl landed, it'd take her a second to get up, a second Katniss could use her knife in. Tally dropped out of the air onto the bloody glass below, unfazed by her target's dodging. She began to rise, slowly, deliberately, as Katniss swung her knife toward the girl's back. It never arrived at its destination, as an inhumanly strong arm shot out and clamped razor-nails around Katniss' wrist. Tally looked back, almost disapprovingly, her tongue once again moving out of her mouth on its own accord. Partially out of defense and partially out of revulsion, Katniss swung her left leg up, booting Tally in the face. The other girl let go and staggered backward, but began to smile unnervingly.

"Oh, you're a fighter," she breathed, the genuine gratefulness in her voice terrifying. "That's wonderful. I'm feeling so much now… everything's so clear!"

Katniss felt unusually cold sweat develop along her brow, odd for the weather.

She's too close for me to use my bow. And my knife is clumsy compared to her nails. I need to create some distance between us, and that leaves me with only a few options.

Katniss replaced her knife and took her jacket off, wrapping it around her waist by the sleeves. She raised her left fist to guard her midsection, and brought her right just below her chin. She rocked gently on her toes, bending her knees slightly. Her breath became more deliberate, and she felt the warmth of her ki beginning to swirl around her. Tally rushed at her again, but this time, she really was ready. She ducked under the girl's initial lunge, and sprung upward with all of her might, propelling her fist into Tally's chin. A brief flicker of fiery ki marked the trail of the shohiken as it sent her target skyward. Katniss landed before her opponent, her fist aching. She hadn't performed an Ansatsuken maneuver in a while, but it had hit just as hard as the ones before.

Now, close in. Kill her. No, don't! Remember why you did that, to put distance between you and her. You can't lose yourself again- you'll end up like her, or worse.

Katniss managed to shut out the Satsui no Hado's urgings long enough to turn and sprint away, making it another block down the road before Tally began to recover from the stupor the punch had shot her into. Katniss swung her bow back off of her shoulder and nocked an arrow into place, letting it fly towards the killer's limp body. However, as the arrow neared its target, the body was not so limp anymore. Tally sprung to her feet, snatching the arrow out of the air and snapping the shaft in half.

She keeps countering only right before she'd take a lethal hit… she's just toying with me, realized Katniss.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," taunted the Special. "That's not how this works. I'm the one who shoots you." She unclipped both of her weapons from her belt and spun them around her fingers before leveling them at Katniss. "Now, let's make things ugly!"

Katniss barely had time to jump out of the way before two torrents of lead skittered off the pavement where she had been moments before. She ducked towards one of the abandoned cars and swung herself behind it for cover. A few more of the small-caliber bullets plinked off of the metal behind her, giving her a moment to appreciate that there were no bodies tucked behind the car. In the brief respite, a thought occurred to Katniss, and she began to put a plan into motion.

It's a gamble, but it might pay off.

She sprinted for the next abandoned car as quickly as she could, rolling into cover as another spray of bullets whipped past behind her. She took a deep breath, and hopped up behind the car. Tally had her weapons trained on her the moment she appeared, and clamped down the triggers with an iron grip. Katniss ducked back down again, pulling herself down by the edge of the car to speed her descent, and the bullets flew past again.

Now.

She strung an arrow, popped back over cover, and let it fly. Tally saw this first and foremost as an opportunity to shoot again, so her first response was to line her Fabrique Nationales back up and catch her again, since it'd take longer for her to dive back behind her cover when she had to manage her bow. So she centered the girl in her iron sights, pulled the trigger, and heard a very heavy and distressing click. Her superhuman reflexes had assessed the situation, and knew the only option left was damage control. Her hands slipped out of the weapons' grips and rose to her face, with barely enough time to grab the arrow's shaft as it entered her right eye.

Yes! Thought Katniss triumphantly, watching the blood begin to flow from the Special's eye. She'll collapse any second now, and I can get to the bank and get this over with and she is not collapsing.

Tally grimaced while removing the arrow and a large portion of the eye with it. She cupped her hand over it, and directed her left eye's gaze back at Katniss as her mouth curled into a toothy grin.

"Now you've done it," she hissed. "Now you've gone and made me mad! Why couldn't you just die like everyone else?!"

"Because when someone tells me to die, I'm not inclined to listen to them," grunted Katniss.

"Maybe YOU SHOULD!" screamed Tally, suddenly bursting forward at top speed, her upper body leaned forward, her left arm hanging loosely at its side. Katniss was shocked by her sudden speed, and only had time to take a few steps back before the Special had vaulted over the car she was currently using as cover and drove a butterfly kick into her face. The tribute flew backwards a few feet, lights spinning in front of her eyes.

"That's payback for earlier," growled Tally as she landed, catlike, on her feet and free hand. She rose and walked over the dazed Katniss, lowering her right hand from her eye. Blood and gore fell languidly from it as she reached toward a silver-gray right eye. "And this… is payback for just now."

Katniss saw the blood-covered hand advance through the twirling stars in the fading light, the metal nails forming a ring around her vision. She had been very aware that this could end badly, but she had held on to a glimmer of hope that she would somehow pull through.

I guess that was pretty silly of me. I'll make sure to tell Holly that I'm sorry that I let her down. And probably Twilight too. And Adam, and Ruby, and Ryuko… and everybody else. In the long run, losing here hurts everybody right? Or am I just thinking nonsense here?

Tally carved a little circle into the skin around the eye, tracing her line below the lid and above the eyebrow, making sure things were nice and neat, so that if anybody else decided to wander through this town they would know that this was a special case. She raised the arm back, like a waiting piston, ready to drive it forward through the circle she had drawn. Deep down, she knew that she didn't really want to do it. She hadn't really wanted to kill anyone in this town. She was aware that there was some evil thing sitting on her mind, a cancer blotting out her morality in exchange for her Special-ness, that told her that being clear justified these deaths. And she knew it was wrong. But something about this place made it a lot harder to listen to the inner voice telling her to stop, to listen instead to the inner voice telling her to go ahead. What was it, that they had called it in her training? The Imp of the Perverse. A lot of Specials lose themselves to it, they said, because if you can do anything, at some point you want to do everything. But here… what was the harm in slitting the throats of a few innocent bystanders, snatching a few families out of their cars and driving your hands through their lungs? It wasn't real, none of it was real, and everything was so wonderfully clear.

Her hand shot forward, but lost its speed and direction halfway to its destination. At first she wondered if she had finally gone soft, that the legendary Tally Youngblood could no longer execute a mission properly. But a quick report from her arm muscles indicated that it was not a voluntary decision. Hot, dull, explosive pain radiated out from the limb as it fell to her side. A sharp, deep crack told her the source of that pain. She lifted herself to her feet and turned from her prey to the man holding a massive revolver aloft, his sunglasses glowing in what little light was left.

She moved her left hand to the source of the pain at her shoulder, and it came away covered in fresh blood. Her blood.

"You shot me," she stated, incredulous.

The man frowned.

"That's right, I did," he said.

"You're going to die for that," coughed Tally, sprinting forward.

Katniss pried herself off of the ground, her vision slowly returning to normal. She still felt dizzy, and wasn't quite certain if what she was seeing was real. It appeared as though the hitchhiker was armed and was engaging Tally. Or rather, Tally was engaging him. She leapt into the air, swiping her good arm towards him. In an instant, the position of the man's weapon had changed, and another shot rang out, and then another, and one more. Tally fell to the ground, each of her limbs now useless.

"Gyaaah," she moaned weakly, rolling onto her back.

"You… saved me?" asked Katniss, attempting to gain her balance.

"I did my part," said the man softly, with a smile. "You gave me the ride here, didn't you?"

Katniss blinked the little lights away again. "Yeah, but… I thought that's all you wanted."

"It was. I was trying my best to travel alone, but this kind of thing is bound to happen."

"What do you mean, bound to happen? Did you have some part in this?"

The man pushed his glasses up further, even as the sun now slipped below the horizon.

"Knowledgeable people in the insurance industry called me a Human Act Of God. Wherever I go, disaster follows. Wherever there are people I care about, they're bound to get hurt. That's why I was trying to travel alone. But I got lazy, and now look what happened here. It's a tragedy, all of these lives lost. And it's somehow, indirectly, my fault."

Can he really be serious? Does he really think this is all because of him, and not the girl who actually went to the trouble of killing everyone here.

"No, it's… it's her," said Katniss, stumbling over to Tally. The Special's remaining eye locked onto her, and pained whimpers began to escape from between her fangs. "You want payback?" she asked of the immobilized girl, whose eye widened in fear.

"N-no," whispered Tally.

Katniss drew an arrow from her quiver, her fingers clamping down until her knuckles were white.

"This is for everyone that you killed," she hissed, driving the arrow through the remaining eye, this time digging far enough to silence her permanently.

"No!" screamed the man, diving toward them, but he was too late. He fell onto the ground uselessly next to Tally's body.

"No, what?" asked Katniss. "You just said this was a tragedy. It's her fault. You're the one who shot her, after all!"

"You're the one who doesn't understand," he cried. "No human has the right to take the life of another!"

"But she took the lives of everyone else!"

"But does that mean that she wasn't human?"

"She said that killing them made her human! What kind of moron are you?!"

"Am I a moron because I believe in love and peace?"

"If believing in love and peace means that people like that get more chances to keep on killing, yes, yes you are!"

"I have to let them live," he said, suddenly sorrowful and distant. "Everyone's ticket to the future… is blank."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" asked Katniss, who realized that all of this arguing had really worn her out. Or maybe it hadn't. She was really feeling dizzy, like maybe she should lie down. Yes, lying down would be a good idea, she resolved, and fell face-first into the ground.