Desert Arena: The city girl is screwed

[formersurgeon]

Who| Joan Watson and open
What| Joan arrives in the arena
Where| Desert arena
When| Middle of week one
Warnings/Notes| I have no idea! I'll update depending on what transpires :) (And oh my god, did this get wall-o'-texty...)



She doesn't think Sherlock had this in mind when he said that when you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, is the truth.

Because this is impossible. Waking up in this weird place, no memory of how she got here, and being told she has to fight to the death in some sort of Thunderdome "there can be only one" crap?

And then there's the outfit.

If Joan were familiar with Game of Thrones, she might be amused by the irony of a short attractive Asian woman dressed up like the excessively tall, unattractive, blonde Brienne of Tarth. But all she can figure is that she's dressed like Joan of Arc, which is more like a bad joke. Especially considering the "armor" is just copper colored felt woven through with shiny faux metallic strands, and won't protect her a damn. They haven't even given her a sword to go with the costume.

Clearly she's dreaming, or has been slipped some sort of hallucinogen, right? But even those theories are rapidly fading into impossibilities as all this is proving to be much too real. Apparently what she thought was impossible is in actuality just very, very improbable.

She's quiet as they prepare her, alert to any possibility of escape. They're careful, though, guarding her, clearly ready to put an end to any escape attempt. She sees no point in fighting back as they inject her with the tracker, as they bring her to the pedestal. They're more likely to injure her than she's likely to escape, and if she's hurt she'll probably have less of a chance of surviving whatever they have in store for her.

She doesn't know what to expect. And in many ways, what she's confronted with upon her release is one of the worst possible scenarios. Joan has lived in the city her whole life, and has no experience whatsoever with wilderness survival. She can't even light a fire in a fireplace. Not to mention it's hot. And sunny. Joan immediately begins to broil inside her glinting, heavy felt "armor." If she doesn't get into some shade, and soon,, she's not going to survive long enough to be killed by one of the other "tributes."

She surveys the area, and heads toward the mountains, hoping for an outcropping, a large boulder, anything to get her out of the sun. On the way she picks up a rock, small enough to carry in one hand, large enough to smash someone's skull in if she has to, and gets the opportunity.

Comments

[shambler]

R takes wandering to a whole new level. That's what he'd say, if he was Alive and trying to pump himself up for another day of stumbling around looking for that watering hole and telling himself everything was cool. Telling himself he was cool and okay.

He's not cool or okay and the only thing he is? Is hungry. Plus lost. You think he'd be used to being lost by now.

R's not sure if it's been two or three days since the Cornucopia. They blend together and he's distracted both by the hunger and the fact his exposed arms have gone from "wish they were sunburning" to full on splitting, the skin drying out and starting to crack like gray, leathery paper. It's kinda gross. R catches himself absently picking at it more than once, the zombie having to force himself to stop before he peels it down to the bone. It's something to do. R's not sure what it is, but every time he gets close enough to the animals here, they book it before he can sink his teeth into them. He can't even find something to teeth on bigger than a lizard or a snake. It's a little pathetic.

The zombie's getting closer to the mountains when he catches that tang in the air: it's Life, human and strong. Fresh enough to make him stand up a little bit straighter and sniff again and there it is. Suddenly hopeful, R shuffles a little faster, kicking up sand and resisting the urge to start groaning on instinct. Eventually he spots a woman, this pretty one with dark hair and armor that's glinting in the sun even from all the way out here. It's not enough to make R change his mind, but he does wonder if he'll chip a tooth on that chestplate.

The hunger shrugs.

R starts lurching for Joan Watson, this mess of a boy wearing clothes that have seen better days between the frayed holes and the suspicious stains splattered over his chest. He's about two seconds from calling it a day and moaning "brains" at her.

[formersurgeon]

One of the benefits to be attacked by a zombie, apparently, is that you can hear them coming. Joan looks over at the sound of feet shuffling in the sand. Her first instinct when she sees him moving toward her is concern. The guy looks...there isn't a word that's not a massive understatement. Suffice to say, he's clearly not doing well. He looks in dire need of help, and isn't holding a weapon, so Joan takes a step in his direction.

"Hello?"

Then she notices the blood smeared across his mouth, and she takes that step back, frowning. Something is seriously not right here. Then he starts lurching for her, and she swears, turns, runs.

[shambler]

And...there she goes. Good head-start, runs like she's kept in shape. Of course he'd get a fit one.

R wheezes out a sigh and starts trekking after her, staggering as fast as his stiff legs can go. This is the part he could do without: the whole chasing them down, waiting until they tired out and he could catch up part. That part. Back home prey could lose him in the ruins of the city. Out here, though, he could see and smell a lot further and the odds of him catching up were actually a lot better. For once this heat was actually a good thing. He'd just shrivel a little bit more. Her? She'd need all that stuff like food and water and rest. He can still do this, if he can keep her within smelling range.

R follows after her. He's not sure how long . The closer to the mountains they get, the more the terrain becomes rocky and littered with boulders, R navigating his way through awkwardly. There isn't much out here to distract him. Every now and then R lifts his head and sniffs.

He thinks he's close. Then he turns a corner around one of the larger boulders and hello, there she is, as large as Life itself. Nice, healthy face, straight black hair he'll ruin once he feeds. Seems like a shame. R attacks anyway, lunging for her with a gurgling snarl and his hands outstretched.

[formersurgeon]

It's hot. It's so hot. And the heavy cloth of her fake armor just weighs her down and traps the heat. She slows, and can hear that he's still chasing her. She's not going to get out of this by running, so she forces herself to think. Think. This guy is moving pretty fast, but he's still dragging himself along. As far as she can tell, he's moving by brute force, and clearly doesn't have much coordination. She might not be able to outrun him. But she can outclimb him.

She looks at the boulders she's passing, looking for one with enough foot- and handholds that she can make it to the top. He's getting closer, she can hear it, and she's having to force herself to stay calm. Panic will get her killed.

She finally finds one, ducks to the side of it. He's right on her heels, and as he rushes her, she scrambles up as much as she can and aims a sharp kick at his face, hoping to knock him away enough so that she's able to get to the top.

[shambler]

Why is he surprised she cheats and goes up? It's like the one direction zombies struggle with. Stairs are a pain; ladders a pipe dream. R reaches the boulder as she's already scrabbling up it, the zombie going for broke and trying to grab her legs before they're out reach. All he gets for his trouble is a kick in the face.

R's head rocks back as he stumbles, tries to right himself, and nearly falls on his butt anyway. His head would be ringing, if he was human. It's a good kick for that angle, R starting to suspect he's a magnet for kicks these days. By the time he recovers, the human woman's had plenty of time to get her legs out of grabbing reach, R looking up at her with a dazed look like he has no idea how she teleported up there.

"Ghhhggr..." R moans. It's more of a whine now, R reaching up and pawing at the boulder like maybe he wants to climb up after her too. All he gets for his trouble is a few black smears across the rock's surface. Some of his drying skin flakes off. He even lets rip a louder groan to see if that'll spook her (that and it just feels natural to groan. Zombie and all that).

She's pretty damn good at not slipping and falling into his waiting mouth, R realizes with an exasperated sigh. A Dead boy can hope, right?

[formersurgeon]

She manages to get to the top, and stays for a moment on her hands and knees, head down, panting from the run and the heat. Then she turns and lies on her stomach, looking down at her pursuer. From up close, she can see the way his skin is crackling and flaking off, the way his eyes are clouded and scratched, and god, the smell.

"How the hell are you still moving around?" she asks, talking mostly to herself.

If you want to timeskip or anything, I'm down /wings it

[shambler]

For a long moment, it seems like he's just going to sit there and stare.

Then he shrugs.

It's so slow it almost looks like an accident, R gaping up at her before he goes back to trying to climb up. He wishes he could groan the answer to her. Despite the sun beating down on both their heads, R doesn't look like he's ready to throw in the towel yet and he could do this all day - literally. His eyes are locked on hers; she has this warm brown that makes him wonder who's behind it, who she is when they're not doing the whole cat and mouse thing. They're not even on a first name basis. He's It and she's Food. It's pretty basic.

R wastes more time trying to climb his way up. A few times the zombie gets the creative idea to try to circle around the boulder and look for any gentler surfaces - lucky for Joan, it's corpse-proof on all sides, R's moans sounding almost annoyed now.

Totally going with the flow and winging it back :)

[formersurgeon]

She sees that shrug, and she blinks, narrowing her eyes. All of his actions to that point have said to her "mindless animal," but that shrug? That shrug suggests to her that there may well be some awareness there. He's looking into her eyes, and she wonders what he's thinking, if he's thinking. He wants to kill her and eat her, that much is very clear. It's likewise very clear, to Joan at least, that he's really hungry, just from the noises he's making.

She watches him from her perch as he circles the boulder, waiting for him to calm down. The sun is thankfully starting to set by the time she speaks to him again.

"Do you understand me?"

[shambler]

There's a point where he has trouble seeing her in the dark, R's vision not much better than a human's. He knows she's still on that rock with the smell - that voice lets him know exactly where she's moved on her perch, R shuffling over so he'd be close enough that if she, y'know, happened to slip, he'd be waiting close enough to pounce on her. Just in case. Never know, right?

Maybe it's the cold setting in, his muscles getting stiffer and stiffer. Maybe he's still starved for conversation because let's face it, Orc wasn't the best conversationalist R's ever had and that's saying something. Could be he's stalling because he'd prefer not to eat this woman if he had a choice. She sounds like she's got a good head on her shoulders, R remembering she hadn't screamed or panicked or run herself into a corner like anyone else in her position. If he didn't know better, he'd say he felt more...observed by this woman.

Her words don't slide off him like they normally would when he's starved, R's head tilting up toward her voice.

I can, really. Don't let the groans fool you, R wants to say.

Instead he gurgles: "Hun....gry. Brra - "

Don't go moaning "brains" like any old corpse! R snaps his mouth shut, embarrassed in front of his future dinner.

[formersurgeon]

He answers her, and that second word might not get all the way out, but she has a pretty good idea how it would have finished, and it makes things click. He's chasing her, wants to eat her, lurches and shuffles along, has no business whatsoever being ambulatory in his current condition, and he wants brains? It would be laughably cliche if it wasn't clearly true.

"You're a zombie." Why not? If all this other crazy stuff is true, why not zombies?

"I'm sorry you're hungry. But you're not eating me. Go find someone else."

Worth a try.

[shambler]

R pauses in his moaning and groaning, honestly confused here. Food's not supposed to be polite like this, setting firm boundaries and doing anything aside from trying to kill him while he does the same back. That's just not how things are done. It's so against the grain that R stops and stares and gapes like the village idiot. Black drool oozes out of his mouth and plops on the sand.

He's so surprised he blurts out the first thing that comes to mind:

"Can't. Only...y...you..." R gulps and tries again, "here - "

The zombie suddenly lunges again at the boulder, smacking into it with a dull thump.

Yep, still can't climb it. He'll try again later. Who knows, he could get lucky.

R wheezes as he gets a second wind, only pausing when he catches something blinking coming from the sky. A set of silver parachutes descends from the night and starts to drift toward Joan with her first set of sponsor gifts.

[formersurgeon]

He thuds against the boulder, and she flinches, then leans over again.

"I'm not the only person around. And if you think I'm just going to climb down and let you eat me? You're crazy."

Of course, she's not exactly doing all that well up here. The sun is setting, and the heat is letting up, but she knows enough about deserts to know it's about to get very, very cold. But she might not survive the thirst to be killed by the hypothermia.

The motion from the sky makes her look up, and she frowns, standing as the capsules come to a gentle rest on the rock, the silver parachutes fluttering over them. For a moment she half-expects them to explode. When they don't, she goes to them, and opens them up.

A sleeping bag. A fire starting kit.

And water.

The water might be drugged. Poisoned. After all this, she has no reason to trust it, does she?

Except they want her to die fighting, right? And if she doesn't drink, she'll die anyway.

So she twists off the cap, and swallows down half the bottle.

[shambler]

"Here. Now. Sssorry." R grunts at her words, head hanging down to the side. Crazy? Or stupidly optimistic? Take your pick. (He hopes she doesn't die up there where he can't reach. It'll be a waste of everyone's time).

It seems like he's done talking for now, having already blown through whatever limited vocabulary he could groan up while he's starving. R goes back to his lurking, giving her space to investigate her sponsor gifts.

Obviously Joan's already won some fans somewhere for her no-nonsense, calm approach to an undead cannibal chasing her around (and on a more shallow note, they must really approve of her outfit. Very classy. Looks good on her. Definitely worth the money for extra water).

Now they're dying to see how she gets away from this.

R in the meanwhile has circled around like it'll make a difference, his feet shuffling and dragging in the dark. Every now and then she might hear the sounds of him grunting and rasping to himself. A shoulder grinding up against the boulder. His foot stubbing against a small shrub and kicking it over. He'll be here awhile.

[formersurgeon]

She hears the crackle of the shrub as his foot makes contact with it, and she looks down at it. An idea starts to form. It won't work quite yet, though. The cover of darkness might help her escape, but she won't know where she's going, and may just end up trapped again, or worse.

So she unrolls the sleeping bag as the last of the light leaves the sky, and the temperature plummets. She zips herself inside, more to keep warm than with any intention of sleeping.

"Do you have a name?" she asks. After all, the night will be long (and she only expects a regular-length night) and there's not much else to do aside from talking with the zombie who wants to eat her.

[shambler]

What's she doing up there? R's head bobs up from where it'd started sagging to his chest, interested despite the hunger gnashing its teeth and waiting impatiently for her to fall already. Something zips. R can hear Food moving around, careful, probably, to keep to the center of the boulder . (He wishes he could climb). She doesn't even give him a flash of her legs to start reaching for. Smooth customer.

He's still stumbling around, waiting for an Idea to come and hit him square between the eyes when she speaks up. Her words cut through the silence and the setting cold. Name. Name; he's got one. It's a fight to remember what it is when all he has to do is inhale and that Living scent floods over him.

He almost wishes she didn't ask. It makes what's coming next even more awkward.

"Rrrrggh..." R mumbles, hoping he's slurring so bad today maybe she doesn't catch it. He hangs his head like he's already been caught chewing her leg. "Not...pers...nal."

Yeah, like that'll be any consolation to this stranger. He catches himself before he asks her name, gets roped into a conversation and it does turn personal.

[formersurgeon]

He growls, and Joan interprets that as a "no" instead of a name. Then he says it's not personal, and her lips twitch in a wry smile.

"I'm sure it's not. Not that it's going to stop you from eating me if I give you the chance."

Joan can feel the cold air on her face, and she's becoming very, very grateful for the sleeping bag. It's keeping her warm and even making lying on a rock just a tiny bit more comfortable. Enough so that although she hadn't counted on sleeping, her physical exhaustion eventually draws her into it.

[shambler]

That's usually how it goes. R can't say he's run into many - make that any - people who wanted Death By Zombie. It's not the best way to go out. He can't even see it making the top ten.

Food gets a few hours to doze off, R still wandering around in the dark as she falls quiet. It's getting even colder, so cold he knows his breath should be coming out in white puffs if only he could generate the body heat for it. Instead he gets stiff muscles, his knees locking up. It's getting hard to stagger around. Sitting down might make it worse. If he sits down, R thinks he might not be able to get up so yeah, no sitting or lying around like a lump of dead meat; moving around is the name of the game until morning. Might as well get some shuffling in, R bored and hungry and wishing Food didn't need sleep because the silence borders on suffocating. Even groaning, loudly (maybe even a little insistently), doesn't jump-start the conversation.

Jesus, this is gonna a long night. R's actually glad when the whimpering starts.

It's off in the distance, this pathetic whimpering that sounds human to him - enough to leave Food's rock and try his chances over there. He tells himself he'll put whoever it is out there out of their misery. "Mercy-killing", so he'll feel less guilty. R stumbles over, kicking his way through more brush and bumping against the smaller boulders until he spots what's making the noise. Some kind of rabbit, this weird looking thing with horns tacked onto its head and when it opens its mouth, out comes a Living male's scream, choking off at the end like he's been stabbed right in the gut.

Are you serious? R feels cheated staring there dumbly at the rabbit. He only remembers after the fact to swipe at it because it still counts as flesh, the freaky rabbit still shrieking all the way to his mouth. Ugh. He's had better. (Food's better conversation and he bets she has a brain to match).

[formersurgeon]

Joan is jolted awake by a scream. Sherlock's scream. She gets out of the sleeping bag and goes to the edge of the boulder, trying to make out things in the dark. She can't hear the zombie shuffling around the base of the rock, can't see any motion. He must have gone, probably in the direction of that voice.

His voice.

Her first instinct is to go to Sherlock, help him, but that's stupid. It's dark, she's unarmed, and if he's hurt or dead, pretty much the only thing she can do is get herself hurt or dead in return. And for all she knows, the sound was a recording or something.

No. As much as it hurts, right now she's got to protect herself, and hope Sherlock can do the same. And considering Sherlock might have been attacked by something or someone who can climb this boulder, she can't stay here to do it.

She quickly rolls up the sleeping bag, then grabs the fire starting kit. She brings her wrist to her mouth, and tears off a long strip if fabric from her sleeve with her teeth. It takes her a couple tries, but she manages to set fire to it. She leans over the edge of the rock closest to where the voice came from, finds a shrub, and drops the burning cloth onto it.

It goes up immediately, the dry brush quickly engulfed in flames.

Joan grabs her stuff, tucks it under one arm, and half-climbs, half-slides down the other side of the rock.

[shambler]

R’s finishing mowing his way through the freak rabbit when he turns and spots light back the way he came. What’s this? A bonfire? R forgets all about what Peeta told him - fire can be a trap, a decoy; think smart - and starts lurching his way toward it like a moth, blood and fur still plastered across his mouth. His knees are locked from the cold, enough that he can only manage these stiff hobbling steps, nowhere near the speed he’d put on this afternoon chasing down Food. The rabbit sits heavy in his stomach. More dead weight. Doesn’t feel good. All R can focus on is that fire, the pull to investigate anything new that doesn’t move like another corpse. Fire means people. People means food, means shutting up an urge that’ll never go away.

He’s too dazzled by the fire to put two and two together here. R hears the crackle of dry brush going up like tinder, feels the heat snapping in the air. Another Tribute? Food light herself on fire? She seemed too sharp for it if you asked him.

By the time the zombie arrives, Joan’s already off her boulder and that one bush is already lighting up the others around it. The blaze jumps up in front of R, his skin drying out even further as he stops and gawks. If Food was on that boulder, she’s probably toast. R sniffs, disappointed and angry at himself for being distracted: between the smoke and the burning shrubs, he can’t pick up Food's scent.

It doesn’t occur to R to shuffle off until the first spark jumps on his stained shirt and he nearly bursts into fire himself. Oop, too close. Forgot about that. He’s getting as dry as the brush around him, the zombie slowly backing away before he goes up too.

So much for getting something to eat.

The zombie stays there, watching the fire eventually burn itself out. It’s only then he moves on, wandering away into the night like a lost patrol.

[formersurgeon]

Joan runs.

There's a moon out, but all it serves to do is make the looming blackness of the outcroppings stand out against the looming not-quite-blackness of the sky. Somehow she manages to not run herself into a corner or off a sudden cliff. Eventually she stops running, and listens for shuffling, groaning, anything that would suggest the zombie followed her. She hears nothing. She tightens her grip on her supplies, and keeps walking. She'll have to start a campfire soon. She can hear animals out there, and knows that some of them probably want to eat her, and won't be quite as conversational about it.