thearena | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who| Ellie and OPEN
What| Ellie is just trying to survive but that's kind of hard when you're starving.
Where| Wandering around
When| Catch-all for everything from the cornucopia through the second week.
Warnings/Notes| language, for sure. will update if anything else.

Ellie was starving.

It wasn't the first time she had starved, of course, and it was very unlikely to be the last. It was just the first time she had starved without anything she could really do about it.

She was pretty good with plants - knew better than to eat things she wasn't absolutely sure wasn't poisonous - and she didn't recognize any of the plants. So she'd made do with the rotten apples - digging out the rotten bits with her fingers and eating around the rest. It wasn't good, and she'd thrown up once, but any food was good food, at this point.

It simply wasn't going to last.

So she went hunting.

Not literally, of course. She was armed only with a piece of wood, and she'd done nothing but run from the wildlife and the creepy moving forest. No. She was hunting for supplies. She was hunting for people.

People she could steal from.

No way that could go wrong, right?

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He looked upwards, squinting his beady eyes till he saw her and waved one of his shovel sized hands.

"Hey...what are you doing up there?" His first thought was there might be food. Even when they had food FAYZ kids were always thinking about it

"Keeping out of the way," Ellie called down to him, scrambling a couple of branches closer though still out of reach.

"You got any food? I'm fucking starving."

Orc hesitated. Food wasn't something you just gave away. Food was something you horded because it was extremely precious!

But...she needed his help and he was trying to be a better person wasn't he?

"Got some Ranch dressing." He explained. "A potato." He added and after another moment he confessed, "And beer."

She slithered down to the end of the branch so she was just above his head, though still out of reach unless she reached down.

"Ranch dressing? What the hell is that?" She asked, salad dressing not exactly being a common commodity post-apocalypse. "Potatoes are good. The beer though, ah, you can keep that, tough guy."

"It's like...well a sauce. But thick." He rummaged around in his back and held up the heavy bottle of thick white goo so she could see it and try it. He doubted she could drink the whole thing. She didn't look like the type.

"You ever tried beer?" He added.

"A sauce, huh?" She asked as she reached down. Her hands were dirty as hell, so she tipped the bottle back and poured some directly onto her tongue instead. Oh god that was a kick to the teeth. She made a bit of a face but took another mouthful. It was obviously, obviously not supposed to be eaten by itself, but it probably had tons of calories, so she forced herself to eat it, and then leaned down to give the bottle back.

"Thanks. And yeah, I have. It's not... really my thing. I'm so hungry I think if I drank any I'd be drunk for a week."

"You act like that's a bad thing around here." Orc chuckled taking back the dressing. It was a dark bitter chuckle but the look on his face indicated he hadn't laughed in any sort of way in a long while.

"Feeling better?" He added now that she'd had something to eat and...well drink.

In truth, the heaviness of the dressing and the lack of solid food was making her feel a bit ill, but she forced a smile anyway.

"Yeah. Thanks. I needed that. And I guess it wouldn't be a bad thing for some people, but I would probably just get myself killed in a ditch somewhere."

"Sooner would be better then later." Orc acknowledged and rummaged around in his bag till he produced a nice fat potato and held it up to her.

"The longer you stay here, the worse things will get. They start to mess with the land. Monsters come out. The lucky ones die early."

Super encouraging as always.

Well that sent a chill straight up her spine. "Yeah, well, if it's all the same, I'd like to stay alive as long as possible," She said as she carefully reached out and took the potato.

She may have also snapped her hand back a little quickly. She tucked it away to eat later, when she could make a fire.

Even Orc wasn't so thick that he wouldn't notice the fear she had for him.

Well good. Fear would keep her alive.

"You should be OK. You're smart." He acknowledged. "Just gotta make sure you don't run into the crazy ones." He had seen a few on the TV. The ones who actually enjoyed killing.

"Yeah, I'm doing my best," She said mildly as she settled herself on the tree. She was out of his reach, but still close enough to talk easily without raising their voices.

"You got any good info on who the 'crazy ones' are?"

Orc lowered himself into a seated position at the base of her tree and folded his arms.

"The turtle. He killed alot of people last round. Seemed pretty dark." It was an expression he was all too familiar with watching the green skinned monsters barely repressed anger.

"The big muscular guy, I saw him again. He already won once. His name is Max." He tried to think of a better explanation but it was beyond him.

"There's a zombie. He's a nice guy but if he gets hungry he can't stop himself. Then you'll be like him."

She listened closely, nodding after each one. "The turtle, huh? Yeah he seemed kind of off when I met him. Not surprised at all."

She paused, and then looked a little pained at the mention of R.

"R? He seemed okay. He warned me not to get close with his muzzle off. But I don't... I don't think he could make me like him anyway. Even if he did bite me."

"Better safe then sorry." Not that Orc had anything to worry about.

"He was nice enough when we talked. But he wasn't hungry, and I'm not edible...at least not to him."

Sandworms on the other hand...

"Do you fight?"

Do you fight? It was an innocent enough question. It made Ellie extremely uncomfortable to think about. Did she fight? Yeah. Yeah, she did. And she'd seen more blood on her hands than she cared to think about.

"If I have to," She answered tightly instead. "I can take care of myself, if that's what you're asking."

He nodded and took a deep breath letting it out through his nose with a lose whistling sound.

"Good. Sooner or later you'll have to. They'll make you." They had made him even though he didn't want to. He'd been lucky enough so far he'd only had to fight animals and monsters. But sooner or later he knew they'd force him towards the other tributes.

"Yeah, well they can fucking try," Ellie said a little bitterly, cradling the potato in her shirt. She could argue but she knew it was the truth. She'd been at the cornucopia.

"Have you -- have you had to fight, yet?"

He shook his head gently. Even gently with the size of him it seemed to carry great weight.

"Just coyotes and monsters. No humans yet. No one really messes with me." He sounded grateful for that fact.

"Heh..." She said, almost a chuckle as she watched him from above.

"Yeah well I don't really blame them. It would be like picking a fight with a freight train, I guess."

Orc gave a dry almost chuckle as well.

"It really doesn't seem fair does it? Everyone else with powers has them turned off. Me being like this...what can most people do?"

Then again he knew he wasn't invincible. He'd cut himself on the first day after all.

"Other people have powers?" She asked, raising an eyebrow, focusing in on what was obviously the most important part of the conversation.

"What, like superheros and stuff? I mean I know you're weird, and I'm weird, but does anyone have like - actual powers?"

"Oh sure. You didn't know?"

Orc hadn't seen any in person, but he'd seen the videos and Howard had told him.

"Some people here got powers, strong powers. Like magic. Or super strength. I think one girl can turn into other people And there's a little girl who can turn into stone...like me but better looking. She looks more like a statue you know?" He tried to explain.

"Scept the gamemakers turn off their powers. They can turn them on whenever they like but they save it for special stuff. Like when we were fighting those monsters back in the Capitol."

She raised an eyebrow and let out a bit of a scoff but then the smile disappeared. He was right. The monster attack...

"I wasn't really paying attention," She admits, a little guiltily. "I was kind of doing everything I could not to pay attention. This place is... it's kind of insane."

Orc could understand that.

"If you try to keep up with everything, you might go insane too. Be careful."

He was sure that most people around here were a little insane.