thearena | (no subject)

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Who| Anyone left in then arena, particularly anyone who wants to die.
What| A dragon. Yep.
Where| The areas around Rivers of America.
When| Dusk, late in the week.
Warnings/Notes| See below.

The areas around New Orleans Square and Frontierland have been appealing lately.

Rich, delicious smell have been coming from them, at first very subtle, but today rich. Smells that by pass your nose an sneak into your brain that something good and delicious is here. The trees are blooming, the animals scurrying around seem almost friendly. And, you know, easy to catch. It just feels nicer over there.

Anyone near the River's of America could see the ripples that day, if they were looking. They were the pattern of something large moving under the water, but anyone who'd spent time around the river knew it was certainly not deep enough to hold something that big.

Must just be ducks diving.

Just as the final rays of dusk began to fade from the sky, music began to once again play over the loud speakers. What might have once been an epic song was reedy, broken and old, the eerie tune warbling through the quiet air before sputtering out into heavy silence.

And then the water burst up, and up, and up with a massive roar.

The beast was massive, black wings stretching up towards the sky as it's body writhed out of the water, shaking the ground as it stepped on to it. It was hungry, it was pissed, and it was not happy to be at Disneyland.

And, as it opened it's massive jaw to screech it's rages at the sky, it let out a blast of fire that arched up to the sky, flattening against the previously invisible forcefield above it's head.

And then it started to move. To seek out prey. And to leave it's mark all over.

---

See the sub threads below for the timeline of the night, and then hop in.

This dragon mutt isn't very smart, and is woundable, but too dense to kill (at least before the gamemakers short circuit it.) It's covered in hard scales, and does breath fire in short blasts, although it takes a minutes or so to build up after a blast. Feel free to NPC and handwave the dragon as needed for your threads.

Most of the buildings in Splash Mountain, New Orleans Square and Frontierland are smouldering and burned out after this, and a few still actively burning, but the fire doesn't leave the areas.

It is also ediable, if you are so inclined, but incredibly tough and not very tasty. It also causes vague nausea, but won't kill you.

Although technically the subthreads are the top-level comments, any replies to those three will count as "top-level" comment in regards to activity.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

At precisely the strike of midnight, the Dragon turns his head up and lets out a horrific high pitched scream. The scream continues as he starts to toss his head back and forth, before taking flight.

landing on the peak of Splash mountain, he twitches and keens, letting out frantic bursts of fire, and crushing much of the fake mountain, causing large pieces of debris to crash down as he frantically twitches. Finally he tries to take flight, still keening, before hitting the force field and being thrown back to the ground forcefully, his twitching body spread across what remains of Splash mountain.

The force of the impact sends rippled of energy surging over the force field, before they settle, the field again becoming an invisible barrier. The night goes quiet except for the soft crackle and pop of the building as they smolder away.

Sometimes, the best way to survive was to hide. To get out of the path of destruction and just let it pass.

Snow is covered in dust and sweat, and a few well earned tears over the passed on days have been the only reason her face looks as clean as it does. She knows now, only too late to save herself the misery, that water here is bad. It turns her stomach a dozen different ways, and what little food she's been able to find lately hasn't stayed.

It's been days since she's eaten anything solid, and she just doesn't have the energy she needs to fight anymore. Or even run. And dragons, Snow is fairly certain, are never good things to cross, no mater what world you find yourself in.

The shadow of the mountain, to her tired, blurry mind seems like best place dig in. Lots of small shadowy spaces to curl up into and wait out disaster.

The dampness here makes everything smell rotten, and almost as soon as she gets near enough to notice, she regrets it. But the screams of the beast and the looming shadow make it clear that she has no other choice. So into the "mountain" she goes...

"Snow?" Ruby called, voice low and worried. A little hoarse from hunger, maybe. She'd been doing their best to feed them - giving Snow everything she could. But survival skills don't help when there's no food, and she's almost as bad off as Snow. She's almost glad everyone else seems as bad off, or it would be hopeless.

Except now there's a dragon. A dragon, breathing fire and making trouble. A dragon, which she should be doing everything to avoid. They should get back to the magic area. Forget those sweet smells and run back before they're killed - but she has to get to Snow. She needs to get to her friend.

she stumbles forward, calling out again. "Snow?"

Snow is already inside. The damp darkness is nearly blinding, but the voice echoes. Ruby is near and she can hear her, but she isn't sure that is a good thing. Because the dragon may hear her too...

"Over here!" Snow cries out, as quiet as one can shout.

"Careful," she adds. She's only so deep inside because she's felt her way through.

Ruby followed after, wishing she had her wolf eyes - but nothing could be counted on, around this place... he just had to get to Snow. No problem. She could handle a mine like this.

"Where are you?" she called, more quietly. She was making her way deeper, breath a little hitched. She didn't like being in a mountain with a dragon right outside.

"Over here!" she shouts quiet as she dare and she can hear the tremble in her own voice as she does.

There is something dreadful settling into the pit of her stomach: the agonizing, soul crushing feeling of hopelessness. The certainty of failure. One, or both of them is going to die here in this place, and here, at the edge of tears in the darkness, she understands that somehow more clearly than she ever has before.

Outside there is a dragon and a strange village-like-place full of people who want to kill her. She's cold and she is tired and hungry and feeling the effects of all three to an extent she never has before. She has Ruby here, yes, but even her brave strong friend is not faring this game much better than she is.

The mountain shudders around them, and its hard to know if the groaning, screeching echos sounding throughout the entire area, are coming from the beast above, or the metallic innards of the slowly rotting mountain itself.

She shuts her eyes and breaths. Counts through the fear that wants to overtake her. 1... 2... 3...

No. Just one - only her. Ruby decided that a long time ago, the moment she realized that they couldn't both walk away from this. She has decided that Snow will come out of this a victor if it it’s the last thing she does... she's managed to avoid killing, so far, but her only real goal at this point is to see Snow safe. To make sure Snow is okay.

Snow has a family back home, waiting for her. She has a history to get back to - a story to finish. Ruby... all she really has is Snow. So if she has to choose between the two of them, she'll take the knife. She'll take the dragon. The only thing she'll regret is letting Snow be in this much danger to begin with. But it's going to be alright. She'll make it be okay. She won't let another person die on her... not Snow. Never Snow.

She braces herself against the mountain, as if she can single-handedly keep it up even without her strength. She crawls slowly up and toward the voice, letting her eyes adjust, and reaching out. It'll be okay once she's with Snow. She'll fight the darkness away.

Edited 2013-05-09 08:26 (UTC)

The whole world shudders underneath her as a deafening shriek pierces through the night, and Snow can actually hear the dragon's claws scrape into the rusted metal. There is a distinctive smell of smoke in the air.

"No! No... no Ruby wait!" Snow can feel the building tremble.

The dragon has landed at its peak and this false mountain cannot bare the burden.

Around her, she can hear splashing of objects falling into the stagnant, stinking water, and the splintering of rotten beams. She clutches the nearest solid thing hangs on. Waits till she's sure she has both feet still under her and then, she decides to move on. Back through the darkness the way she'd come.

Edited 2013-05-09 10:15 (UTC)

"Snow?" her voice was frantic - worried, but low. She can feel the water around her ankles, soaking up and into her tattered skirts as she moves a little deeper. She knows Snow told her not too, but Ruby doesn't care. She has to find Snow. That way they'll get out of this together.

Hand outstretched, she tries not to let the dust choke her as she reached out for Snow. The sooner she feels that hand in hers the better. They’ll be safe in no time.

Edited 2013-05-09 10:21 (UTC)

"Get back!" she can hear Ruby ahead. So close and too close all at once. "It's coming down! We have to get back out."

This is her fault, really. This mess that she's not gotten her best friend into as well. She shouldn't have come in here. She should have known better. Of course this wasn't a real mountain. Nothing here was real. Just some elaborate stage set up. There was nowhere safe. Nowhere to hide...

She should have known.

It feels like falling at first. When the ceiling above them crumbles, she hears the crack and the crash and feels the world tumble. Its slips out from beneath her like she'd simply missed a step. But the world just keeps coming up. So fast. So sudden. The scream slips from her throat before she even knows what's happening.

A particularly large ceiling beam that had once been almost three stories above their heads was now the cause of a rapidly collapsing building, and also the reason that Snow White was now two stories below where she had only just been.

"Snow?" She feels the ground trembling, her legs shaking down from under her as the rubble descends. She's on the ground, rocks on her back with scattered shards of limber. She slithers forward anyway, ignoring the continued rumbles and protests of steel as she works her way toward where she last heard Snow's voice.

"Snow!?"

Her heart stops, squeezed by a vice. She still moves forward, breath pounding in her ears as she splashes through muddied water and takes in dust filled air. It doesn't matter.

"...Snow?" there's a hole. There's a whole in the ground where there shouldn't be one. Sharp edges marking where wood punched through the false floor. She can't see her friend. She can't see anything.

The first sounds she can make are meager coughs and the reedy wheeze that comes when she tries so desperately to pull air into her lungs. Still stunned, she blinks her eyes and can see flickers of movement, changes of shadows as fire and smokey moonlight filter through the holes in the crumbling ceiling.

"Red?" she manages to choke out. The fall completely winded her. Knocked every ounce of breath from her lungs. She hurts all over. Head to toe. A broken chunk of flooring pins both her legs to the floor, and she thinks she may be bleeding. But it shifts easily enough and she can wiggle all her toes, so it's better than it could have been.

But it hurts too much to move. She can't breathe quite right, yet. Her head feels light. "I-- Red? You need to get out. I'll be fine."

It's probably a lie. But Red needs to save herself. There has to be a way out from down here. Everything has an exit, somewhere.

Edited 2013-05-09 11:23 (UTC)

There's an exit down there, too, then. There has to be. They just have to find it - they. "I'm not letting you go through this alone." She can't. She won't. She swore.

Wiping the sting from her eyes - just smoke; there's no reason to cry because Snow is going to be perfectly fine - she searches for a handhold or a rope. Anything she can climb down in order to find Snow. Whatever it takes.

She puts an arm over her mouth and starts to try to filter out the breaths. Blinks her eyes to rid herself of smoky tears, and puts her foot out to start testing for the way down. Almost there. She'll make it. She has to.

Edited 2013-05-09 11:47 (UTC)

Most of her back is soaking wet, and so much of her dress is tangled in the rubble she winds up tearing most of the skirt off. But after a few deep, steady breaths she finally manages to get herself up and standing. She's woozy. Feels like maybe she might have hit her head. But here in the smoke-choked darkness, it's hard to see anything more than burning orange shadows.

It reminds her of the nightmares she had after waking from the sleeping curse. Fire and pain and the fear of being horribly and forever lost.

She coughs again. She can see where she feel from, and that the building still is falling down. Fire and chaos above, and somewhere... Ruby. Where is she?

"Ruby?" she hollers. Then coughs. Breathing is far more difficult than it used to be.

There's the sound of splashing water as Ruby succeeds in lowering herself down to the basement. With a light cough and several more splashes she's working her toward Snow's voice.

"Snow?" she calls back, wishing for light; for something other than the feel of crumbling earth around them. She'd give almost anything for the freedom of the outside world. Just so long as she can leave with Snow.

"here are you?" arm outstretched, randomly waving. Her own breath is coming more rapidly. Every mouthful tastes bad.

Edited 2013-05-09 12:14 (UTC)

"I'm here," her voice comes out more as a wheeze than anything else, and she notices there is a distinctively metallic sweet flavour on her tongue as she stumbles through the darkness. There are shapes and movement all around her, but there is one in particular that Snow thinks may look familiar.

She reaches out her hand and feels her way forward. Still, she struggles for breath. And there in the darkness, she cannot see that the dampness on her arms and hands is more blood than water.

"Red!" she's frantic and an she doesn't know if its fear or smoke that are the cause of the tears in her eyes. "We have to go!"

She wants to run, but its dangerous work picking her way through the rubble of the ruined mountain while keeping out of the way of that which still feel from above.

The dragon above roars into the night, and Snow can hear the sound of it's wings, beating violently through the midnight air as it climbs its way into the sky. It may have left its perch, but that was not going to keep the building from continuing to collapse around them.

It doesn't matter. So what if it's a dragon, and a mountain, and entire world teaming up to kill them? They've faced worse, haven't they? They've survived more. They'll do it again. Because family always find each other.

Her powers are off. Her nostrils are stuffed with dust and dirt and smoke and sniffled mucus that flows with tears. "I'm not leaving without you..."

She splashes forward blindly, water slapping at her ankles; listening for that wheezing breath that tells her Snow's alive. She ignores the trembling of the mountain, caring only for the trembling of her best friend's heart.

She's almost reached her friend.

The darkness seems to be pressing in around her. The world growing smaller.

Air in her lungs feels more like poison and the pain in her body has spread so quickly, so fiercely that she's become numb. And that numbness is spreading quickly. Devouring the sensation in her legs, her arms, her

"Red..." the sound is weak. Inaudible unless she's close.

She's falling through the darkness and she can't find anything to hold on to...

Arms. They wrap about Snow as she falls into the darkness, holding her tight against the possibility that the woman might not even feel it.

Can she sense anything in that darkness of hers? The struggle of her friend as she clings the slight body and begins to pull it out with agonizing slowness. The trembling of the mountain as it groans, still threatening to crush them both. The worried cry of Snow, as the hot tears of relief and fear and dust fall atop the dirtied cheek?

Ruby hopes she can. That's what gives her the strength to pull her friend out, over wooden fragments and through the water. Trying not to think about what else might be in there, or how little time they have left. What might be waiting outside?

"Just a few more steps," she promised, glancing back out and toward the exit.

The world is nothing but a blurry thing, moving by rather inexplicably, and she can hardly sense up from down.

The pain and the panic seem to cancel one another, and so she feels neither. Just numbness. Shock.

For what little she is aware of, she is largely unresponsive. For as much as her will drives her to keep going, to fight, she's past the point of fighting her own body's responses.

She wants to wake up.

To keep fighting.

But instead, she has to rely on her friend to carry her out of this mess.

Ruby does, step by step. She lied about how many were left, though. It feels like forever before the light really reveals itself. Countless scrapes and bruises attest to that, where her back hit the wall because she couldn't see. But she hadn't bumped Snow.

That mattered, she told herself. That was important. Don't bump Snow, and everything will be okay. don't drop Snow, and everything will be alright. Just get out. Simple. Get out.

Then there was light. There was shining glaring light, and she was almost dropping her friend. Trembling. They were out. So it was alright.

Right?

The air is cleaner here. Less black and suffocating, but still, she feels like she's downing. She can't breathe.

She's only vaguely half aware that Ruby is anywhere near her. Hovering above her. Keeping her safe.

The world around them screams and crashes down. The noises so loud she would hear nothing else if she could truly hear them at all.

But her world? Her world his fading. Fuzzy. Dull. It all hurts so much that she can't feel anything at all. She's scared. But knows that if she tries to say anything at all... it will only make things worse.

Edited 2013-05-21 00:17 (UTC)

No. She's not allowed to fade away. She's not allowed to go - to disappear. To leave Ruby behind. That's not the way it's supposed to go.

They were out of the cavern. They were supposed to be safe. She wasn't supposed to be crouching down by her friend, screaming Snow's name as she clutched the woman's arms.

Could she even hear her friend's voice? The screams?

"Red?" she finally manages to get the words out, even if they are the wrong ones. "I ..."

She can't even finish her sentence. Not out of the inability to speak, but because of the reality of how that sentence ends. I can't move. I can't breathe. I'm scared.

In the light, the dampness that coats her skin is far more blood than water. Her fall in the darkness having done far more damage than she could have realized; she's already on borrowed time.

She tries again to pull in a good, decent breath, but the air just fills her mouth and all she can taste is blood. It coats her lips in a liquid vibrant red.

"You have to run," she insists and fumbles as best she can for her friend; any part of her she can touch and cling on to. Because she knows it will be the last time.

She clutches the body against herself, heedless of the red stain growing on her dress. Her other hand took Snow's in it, clutching it tight. She didn't think she'd held onto something so tight in her entire life, but she knew it wasn't enough to keep Snow there with her. She wasn't even sure Snow could feel her.

"I'm not going without you," she said, half in a whisper. It was followed by a sob, coming up from deep within. "You're going to be fine." It was a determined growl. Daring the world to prove her wrong. Denying the evidence before her.

"You have to," she insists through the tears in her eyes. Her voice is quiet, whisper-soft, and there is an audible twist of pain on every word. Her fingers curl around Ruby's, though her grip is anything but tight.

"Snow?" her voice is soft. Desperate. Don't go, Snow. Don't leave her...

She wants to answer her. To make these last moments count, but all that comes out is a string of garbled sounds. Her red lips quiver and her hazel eyes are full of tears. There are a thousand things she wants to say and do and.... it wasn't supposed to end like this.

Nothing about this even approaches the happy ending she had in mind. Instead, it's a nightmare. But at least Red is here with her at the very end. If she has nothing else to hold on to, she is glad for that small favor.

It's the last thing she thinks. Sees. Feels. Her best friend staring down at her, tears in her eyes as she holds her hand, and she wants to tell her so many things. To run away from this place and keep herself safe. She wants to tell her to keep running, and fighting and to win. She wants to say how much she believes in her; more than Red will ever know. And that in this life, Red was one of her most precious and treasured things; her dearest and greatest friend.

Perhaps, because of that, there is the smallest hint of a smile on her face as the light fades from her eyes.

"Snow?" it's a faint whisper, choked on tear and desperation. Fear. Emotions that Ruby had always bottled up in the back of her head - only taking out for brief looks, when they were too much or when she was alone. They were the sort of feelings she didn't like to burden her friends with.

Except, without Snow, she had no friends to worry about.

Putting Snow to the ground, her hands moved to the woman's chest, feeling for the heartbeat. Nothing. Pumping. Nothing. Breathing in, lips on lips... nothing. Kissing? Nothing. It wasn't a curse. It wasn't something she could stop. It wasn't... it didn't make sense.

Suddenly nothing made sense/ There was wind, and there was screaming, and there was blood. Pain. Her throat was so sore...

A grave. She had to dig a grave. She stared at the ground, and pressed her hand against the dirt. A grave....

No response will ever come from Snow again; no warmth, no laughter, no tears.

Around Ruby, the world rages on. The screech of the dragon above and a terrible crash as the night turns into day, but for only an instant. The ripple of energy can actually be seen above: the impact of the dragon against the force field. She lands with a the grace of a meteor and does nearly the same amount of damage. Very little now remains the false mountain that Snow and Ruby had only just been inside.

And still, the world moved on.

Not Ruby's. She didn't think it would ever move again.

All there was was the grave. If she knew the capitol would take that, too...

Edited 2013-05-22 10:44 (UTC)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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Splash Mountain

Snow White - Open!

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sorry this is so late. :c

It's okay. <3

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