thearena | Yabba Dabba Nooooo [open]

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Yabba Dabba Nooooo [open]

Who| Guy Crood
What| Guy's Introduction to the Arena. Forecast: Terror with periodic showers of extreme anxiety
Where| I'm going to say he's somewhere around the northwest of the island
When| Second week, I think?
Warnings/Notes| Guy's new and twitchy, so watch out.

"I don't - I don't understand! What do you mean a battle to the death? Are you crazy?!"

The last thing Guy remembered before waking up on a hard bed...thing in a strange shelter (a cave maybe?) had been settling down for the night with the rest of the family. (In a sleep pile, of course.) The place where the Croods had been camped out was hilly and not far from the sea, so the cool night breezes coming in from the ocean had made sleeping all cuddled together rather comfortable and no one in the family could ever pass up a good sleep pile when conditions allowed it. They hadn't even bothered with a fire. There were few wild animals daring enough to tangle with a jungle cat the size of Chunky, or their owl-bear Lu, and their scent alone usually kept most predators away.

That was where he'd been last, curled up next to Eep, his daughter sleeping on his chest, Belt curled around his head, in a jumble of limbs with the rest of the family. All of them had been wrapped up protectively in his father's - in Grug's - arms. The last thing he'd seen was the endless swath of stars above them, their light sharp and beautiful, and the last thing he'd heard was the soft rustling of grasses as the wind swept over the hill.

The next thing he knew, he'd woken up here - wherever here was - alone. No daughter in his arms, no mate curled up next to him, no family to be found when surely they would've woken up if someone had snatched him up in the night.

Then again, Guy still wasn't sure how he'd wound up snatched without waking up himself. All he knew was that he was here, being dragged by people wearing some strange hard...something (were they people at all?) down a tunnel, one that looked far too neatly carved to be natural. The faceless beings dragging him around looked like bug-people, like they were humans with carapaces. (Humbugs? Insectumans?)

"Hey! Hey hey hey hey hey!" he cried out in a thin voice as some of them started pulling off his clothes. Somehow every "hey" was an entirely different pitch. "Hands off! Hands off! Get your creepy bug hands off!"

He thrashed against the hold they had on him. "And give me back that knife! That was my father's!"

Kicking didn't seem to do much good. Whatever they were, they were strong, and before long they'd forced him into unfamiliar clothing and shoes, made of no animal skins Guy had ever seen before.

"Who are you people?!"

Guy felt something pinch his arm and saw one of them withdrawing some kind of long...needle. He let out a terrified yelp as he was shoved onto a round stone. Then he started to rise through a long tube, another tunnel, into a place with open sky.

"What have you done with my family? Where's my daughter?" He pounded his fists against the side of the tube, and screamed again, "Where's my daughter?!"

But the bug-men were gone from view and then he was above ground in the middle of a vast, untamed wilderness, muggy and wet, unlike any he'd ever seen -

"Why did you take me inside a cave somewhere just to shove me back outside again?" Guy yelled at the stone platform he'd risen up on, perplexed, holding out his arms as if to say 'What gives?' What, they'd kidnapped him to move him maybe a mile?

Wait, no, this wasn't like any of the forests of home. It wasn't bright enough. There were no vividly colored plants in rainbow colors, completely overpowering the green, no girelephants grazing nearby, no albatroceroses flying lazily through the air. It was very green but compared to just about every forest he'd ever seen in his life, this place was dim. And those bug-people... He'd never seen anything like them in the old world nor had he'd seen anything like them in Tomorrow.

Where were the hills? Where was the sea? And most importantly of all: Where was his family? His breathing started to come more quickly and catch in his throat as he looked around at an unfamiliar landscape. The strangers' words started to sink in:

You will be competing with the other Tributes in a battle to the death. There will only be one survivor.

There were other people here then. Other people that had probably been grabbed from who knew where, shoved into this place, and told the exact same thing. Before he even realized he was doing it, Guy started to run, but before he got very far he stopped himself, slowing back down to a trot.

It was difficult to. Sometimes, when he was in a panic, Belt was the one that had to smack him out of it, but Belt wasn't here right now. He had to do it for himself.

Just like he used to. Before Belt. When the nights were always dark and his stomach was empty more often than it was full.

"No. No no no. You know how it works," he muttered to himself, waving an arm. "Stop. Stop."

He checked his waist to see if they'd left anything at all that he could use, but his knife, his flint and spark stone, his pouch, all of it was gone. They'd even taken his shell necklace and leather hair tie. He had nothing but the bone bracelet on his wrist.

The moment he realized they hadn't taken that, he let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Okay so maybe it wasn't a knife but his bracelet matched the bracelet on Eep's wrist, that had the same carvings of a warthog and a tiger joyfully chasing each other's tails. There was a ring attached to it, with smaller rings attached to that, bound together with a strip of leather. He pulled that strip extra taught with his teeth. Now was not the time for it to rattle.

After briefly glancing at the carvings on the bracelet again, centering himself, he looked up at the strange new world around him and took a few deep breaths.

"Okay," he said quietly to himself in huffed breath. "Okay, Guy, you've been here before. Maybe not with quite so many people trying to kill you buuut with everything else trying to. You know what to do."

Then he started to move off through the underbrush, quickly but also carefully and - above all else - quietly, his eyes and ears open for threats - and open for anything useful he could find. Especially flint. In situations like this, flint was your friend.

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This was the worst possible time to be separated from his matesprit, the Signless thought miserably. He was tired, he was hungry, and he just wasn't as good at dealing with this kind of terrain as the Disciple was. She was the fearsome hunter, he was the guy who talked at people. Really it was only a matter of time before something decided it wanted to eat him, and growing up in a barren dessert hadn't really given him much skill at climbing trees.

He picked his way through the dense jungle, on the lookout for anything that seemed like it might be aggressive, alert for nearby noises. And those noises sounded like footsteps, barely a few feet away, but not the heavy tread of something large and reptilian (or several somethings large and reptilian, even worse). That was promising.

Of course it could be someone who'd stab first and ask questions later, which was less so. He started moving backwards, hoping to avoid a confrontation entirely, and a twig snapped under his foot loud enough to make him flinch. Welp.

Something started rustling in the underbrush but in a quiet, shifty way, as if the source of it was good at making it difficult for things to hear where exactly rustling in the underbrush was coming from.

If it was a person, maybe they weren't the stabby type. Or maybe they just weren't the jump-out-and-go-SURPRISE stabby type.

Maybe they were the type to sneak up behind you and hold a knife to your throat.

It was cold, the knife against the Signless' throat. The edge was sharp but jagged. It would cut and it would cut well, but it would not cut clean.

"Hiii," came a young man's voice behind him. His tone was the tense, conversational tone that came when people were very stressed but also trying very hard not to be homicidal because of that stress.

And managing just barely.

"You're going to answer some questions and maybe, just maybe, I'm not going to slit your throat. Does that sound good? I think that sounds good."

His next words sounded too conversational to be coming from someone holding a knife to someone else's throat.

"I'm Guy. What's your name, terrifying horror-being of the night?"

Lucky for the Signless, he was smart enough to freeze. This reminded him much, much too much of the last arena, when Terezi had got him from behind with that carefully-sharpened wire, except this would be even messier if he made a misstep. He swallowed nervously, his throat pressing against the blade.

"Hello, Guy. My name is Signless, and I'll do my best to answer what I can."

And it was true, really. He felt bad for no one more than he felt bad for those who were new and scared and still coming to terms with a new situation they probably didn't even fully understand. He'd been there, once.

The knife didn't leave his throat. The arm didn't slacken.

His tone was a little less taut, though, thanks to the Signless' willingness to cooperate.

"Wow, I don't even know where to start," the young man said. "Okay, so what are you? Are you with the bug-people that shoved me out here or someone that got kidnapped and brought here like I did?"

That change in tone was a good sign. Signless did his very best to keep his voice steady and soothing. Thank goodness for sweeps and sweeps experience talking down people more hostile than this.

"I'm a troll. We're a non-human race, from a world called Alternia, and as far as I can tell we're not actually as much like humans as we look. But almost everyone here is a human so it's far easier to just not bother with the differences."

The early attempts to educate the other tributes about troll biology and culture had gone over terribly. There were more important things to worry about, anyway.

"I was taken here, like you, but I've been here much longer, several human months. This is my third time in an arena -- that's what they call these places where they bring us to fight."

"How is it - they said it was a fight to the death. Is this this first time they're making people do that?"

He added, mildly, "In which case, why is that my luck?" He paused. "I guess I shouldn't be directing that at you, I should probably be asking that of the universe, so never mind."

"It's..." He sighs. "I still don't understand how it works. They can bring us back, if we die. Most of us, anyway, there are always some that never come back at all, and we're never told why."

He doesn't like to think about that. That it could be anyone, for any reason, that it could be Karkat or Meulin or, thanks to the new rule this arena, even Peeta.

"I've had to deal with more than my fair share of Fate." He clearly pronounces the capitalized F. "It's never going to do what you want it to do."

"They can - they can bring people back from the dead?" He sounded absolutely horrified by it, by the scope of that. Bug-people that could capture people and decide if they lived and died on a whim. And from far off places, at that. He'd never heard of Alternia, and he'd been traveling with his family in Tomorrow for about two years now.

Tomorrow wasn't all that different from the old world, anyway, and he'd never found a place called Alternia there, either.

"Where is Alternia?" he asked, trying to figure out just how far these...things had spread their horribleness. "Is that in Tomorrow?"

He clarified, realizing that the troll might not have the same word for it. "There was the old world, that died. Yesterday. And we rode the sun to the new one. It has a lot of the same things. Are you from the same place as me, like maybe somewhere I haven't traveled yet, or from...somewhere else?"

"I honestly couldn't tell you. There are so many different people here from such wildly different places that keeping track is difficult. I think that your Yesterday might be like my Beforus, and your Tomorrow might be like my Alternia. So maybe we're not from the same place, but we're from places like each other."

He fidgeted slightly, turning his head as far as he dared.

"Will you let me go, now? It's easier to talk to someone when there isn't a knife at your throat. I'm unarmed, I won't hurt you."

"Yeah, no, that's - that's not going to happen yet. It might, but not yet."

Clearly, he was very cautious, but he was also clearly not killing him at the moment so hopefully that would hold out.

"So, does that mean you're from - I don't know, another world?" He knew more than one existed, after all, since he'd left one behind. "Can they do that?" The question was breathless, terrified. "Take people from other worlds? That means that this place isn't in any of our worlds, right?"

He wasn't sure what he wanted the answer to be. If this was another world could he even go home? Was he now some impossible distance away? If this was his world and other people were being brought to it from far off places, did that mean something this horrible existed in it? If it did, what chance did any other people in Tomorrow have against it, armed only with flint spears and knives, while an enemy could bring people back from the dead?

Edited 2013-11-07 02:38 (UTC)

Right. He'd thought it probably wasn't going to happen yet, but it never hurt to ask.

"As far as anyone brought here knows. Surviving in this world is more important, to most."

His teeth chattered slightly, even though the knife didn't even tremble at Signless's throat, as if the young man behind him was deep in nervous thought and clicking his teeth together.

"Why are they doing this? What's the point of all this?" he asked, his voice cracking.

He shrugged. His voice was tired. He knew the Gamemakers could hear him, because he knew by now how one was never truly alone in the arena, so he had to be careful exactly how he phrased what he said next. They already thought he was too rebellious, too outspoken, and he didn't want them to bring in his mother next because he couldn't keep his mouth shut.

"Who knows. Those in power in this world think it's necessary, that it shows their power to kill us and that it shows their mercy to let one of us win. Those not in power think it's entertainment."

"Entertainment? How could that be entertaining to someone? What kind of monsters are they?"

He sounded like he couldn't believe it, couldn't understand it in the least. It was more alien to him than the troll he was holding his knife to, than the idea of other worlds than his.

"I don't know. I'm not one of them and I don't understand that aspect of their culture anymore than you do."

The Signless was familiar with cruelty, certainly. Many highbloods were that way. He'd seen lowbloods killed because their murderers thought it was funny, but he didn't understand it then and he didn't now.

"They find it dramatic, I suppose. They see it almost like a half-fiction, like a story, far enough removed from them that it's not really real."

The man's breathing behind him came harder as if panic was rising up in him over the thought of it, but far be it from finding that an excuse to attack him, he seemed to find it a reason not to.

Maybe, like many, he didn't like the idea of something jerking around his strings.

He was quiet for a moment, just trying to get his panic under control.

"You said you have no weapons, but you could be lying," he said. "So I'm going to pat you down, okay? Then we'll see about moving away from each other."

Well, that seemed reasonable. He had nothing to hide, after all.

"Go ahead."

He didn't get too intrusive. If he had a knife hidden in his pants somewhere, it'd be a little difficult for him to dig around and pull it out without Guy noticing. So he patted down his waist, crouched slightly and patted down around his ankles.

It was pretty thorough but very clinical. Then he finally seemed satisfied.

"Alright, I'm going to move the knife away from your neck but keep it close as I back away, so don't move. And then I'm going to hold it at your back. And then I'm going to step away. Stay perfectly still."

He added, "Because if you make a sudden move, I am going to stab you and walk away with no regrets, other than the one I'll have over my knife being bloody. Just so that's perfectly clear."

Edited 2013-11-07 04:26 (UTC)

"Perfectly."

He stayed still all through Guy patting him down and stepping away, and stayed still even a little longer than he really had to. He didn't want to get stabbed after all that work not to get stabbed, after all.

"Thank you for not stabbing me. It's much appreciated."

"Uh. You're welcome. That's...not really something I've ever been thanked for, but you're welcome."

Now he was a bit of a distance away, though he still had the knife in hand. It was at least lowered now.

"You can turn around."

When Signless did, he would see a shirtless young man with tan skin and mussy hair. His body was striped with brown-red stripes that seemed painted or dyed on, and the knife in his hand seemed to be knapped from flint.

His dark brown eyes were wife and curious and a little scared but the way his eyebrows were knitted together made it clear that he was waiting to see if Signless was a threat. He wasn't someone to be challenged.

"Sorry about that," he said. "I'm still figuring things out here. I'm a little bit on edge right now."

Understatement.

"And also you look really weird. No offense."

"None taken. All of the people who've never seen trolls before say that."

And really, he could accept that he looked strange, to a human. Gray skin, yellow and red eyes, dull triangular teeth, and of course the horns (even if his were so very small compared to others). For all that trolls were superficially humanoid, the differences were jarring enough in both directions that he honestly found humans to be just as weird. He was just used to it by this point. When humans were the majority of the people you interacted with on a daily basis for months, the novelty wore off quickly.

"I understand being on edge. I promise, I'm not a threat to you. I don't hurt people."

Why would the people who did this toss people in that didn't hurt others? What was the point of the blood bath that would come of that?

"Who are the ones behind all this? What do people know about them? If people have been through this more than once, what's been done to stop them?"

"You have to understand I won't be able to explain everything to you. There are some things we just don't know, or some things we can only guess. As far as I know, President Snow is the ruler here, and this is something he endorses. As far as stopping him and those that work under him, I've seen signs of rebellion, signs that people aren't pleased with the situation, but nothing overt or effective."

He sighed.

"To be very honest I don't think there is a way to stop them." He thought about that for a moment, and then added, "Not a way that would be worth it."

Upon hearing that, Guy just stood there, his eyes wide, as if it was taking time for Signless' words to sink in.

If there was no way to stop them, there was no way to go home. If there was no way to stop them and his family was here, there was no way to save them. If there was no way to stop them and his family was back home, there was no way to get home to them.

So his response to that was a very simple, "No."

It wasn't as if he was denying that Signless was telling the truth or saying no as an exclamation of sorrow. It was a denial of the reality Signless had put forth before him.

No, that wasn't reality and even if it was, he was going to find a way to change it.

Reality said things like that all the time, after all. "You're too young to survive on your own" and "this bear-owl is going to eat you" and "you're going to die of dehydration" and "the world is ending and there's nothing you can do to save yourself." And whenever it did that, Guy said no. That was how reality worked.

The only way to make reality work that way was saying no. If you said "this is the way things are" nothing changed. You didn't survive. You didn't leave the dark of the cave you were cowering in.

Realizing that just saying "no" as if he was denying what Signless was saying probably sounded crazy, he clarified, "You'd be surprised what some people might find worth it."

"I don't think I'd be surprised, necessarily. I understand very well the lengths someone will go to for something they believe in."

He thought of the Summoner, of his revolution built on using the tools of oppression to end oppression, of his fierce insistence that fighting against violence and hate with violence and hate could somehow create a world in which those things didn't exist.

"And if you decide to fight, in whatever way you think you can, I don't think anyone could fault you." He eyed the knife. "Even if they might not personally agree with your methods. I understand why some believe violence is their only choice, even if I can't condone it."

Yabba Dabba Nooooo [open]

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