Choose your own adventure with Azula

[burnedbrighter]

Who: Azula and anyone foolish or brave enough to get close
What: detoxing off her meds and other games
Where: The Labs and surrounding area.
When: Week two
Warnings/Notes: Azula is coming down off an addiction to Morphling, so she may be volatile and violent

These labs were a dark and depressing place. And that was perfect for someone who wanted to wallow in her own misery.

Huddled in a nest made of desks, chairs and assorted furniture Azula had set up her tent in a far corner of the lab. She needed privacy for when the cravings became too much. When she was incapacitated with sweating and muttering and visions. Unfortunately she lacked proper privacy because somewhere in the melee and madness of the first week, one of her tributes had found her and was sticking close to her for protection.

Diana was decent company on the whole. A bit too relaxed about personal space for Azula's taste, and entirely weak and pathetic when it came to combat. They'd hardly had any training time accomplished before this arena so who knows if Diana maintained any of it.

The needs came and went. Sometimes she felt clear headed enough to hunt, and so she did. The rewards were few but she was gradually gaining an understanding of the area. Their dwindling food supply however warned they would need to travel farther from the lab if a fresh food source couldn't be found.

And worse of all, she had been in the arena this long and killed no one. Not a single person! Her last arena was over in a matter of days. This time around she'd been so focused on protecting herself and ensuring she had a safe place to detox she hadn't managed to kill anyone.

Well the time for that would end soon. How much longer could her body need to adjust to the lack of chemicals in her system?

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The lush plantlife provided plenty of places for Azula to hide her beartrap.

Lurking in the trees with a sharpened stick she waited, she could wait for hours without moving, at least until the shaking from her detox came back around. For now she had her nails buried in the bark of a tree so she wouldn't accidentally shake the leaves and was grinding her teeth waiting for anyone foolish enough to cross under her. If they stepped in the beartrap it would be perfect.

If they were just close enough she could jump on them from above and try to force them into the trap? Even better.

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She hated the rain.

She hated it so much that she could just scream if she wasn't biting her lip to keep from giving away her position.

Stupid STUPID Azula. She had let the hallucinations get to her. The aching and the heat and the need for her medication! Chasing some vision deeper into the woods then usual she'd found herself caught in a rainstorm and was currently taking shelter under a tree in her poncho shaking like the leaves above her.

The sound was gentle and soothing to most people, but to her it was a deafening roar that only brought back memories of her first brush with death. How close she'd come to passing on as nothing more then another failed tribute. All it would have taken was one more moment...her mouth would have opened gasping for the air it needed, sucking water into her lungs instead...

...she hated the rain. But could not, would not dare to venture out into it to try and return to the safety of her nest. The thought of it was enough to make her bite her lip even harder and taste the blood from it.

 

Comments

[amplifying]

The sound of the rain was so soothing.

Beck liked rain, even in the Grid. But out here in the User world...it affected everything. You could smell something nice and fresh in the air, and everything grew after it. Everything thrived on this stuff, while in Argon the rain was just, well, rain. It was there, you got wet. Sometimes the platforms got a little slippy. You could smell it too, but it didn't smell as nice as this. That was one thing really nice about the User world.

He wandered through the brush, trying to keep his head on the game. But the sound was so soothing, he couldn't really help but keep his guard down, wandering pointlessly around the forest. It wasn't exactly a smart thing, especially when you took what was wandering around in this Arena into thought. And the people in it, too.

At the labs

[keep_surviving]

There's the small sounds of hidden movement on the other side of the barricade which Azula's trained ears should be able to easily make out. Closer noises of someone nudging heavy furniture came next, not an attempt to break it down but to simply make space. Then the shuffling of a body against the floor before the furniture sound again. Most likely placing it back to its original place.

With all that done, a hand brushes aside the tent flaps and Diana's face appears at the entrance.

“Hey.” She greets, out of a deeply ingrained social expectation more than anything else. There's the shortest moment where she looks at Azula. Checking to make sure she isn't in a state where Diana would want to make herself scarce.

“Check it out.” Crouching to pull herself though the small hole she dragged a container into the tent. “Guess I'm popular.”

Of course, Diana had already opened the container to check inside. She'd taken a small sip of the water as a reward and pocketed the metal wire. It could be helpful. And Azula didn't need to know about it. She wouldn't miss what she didn't know about.

As she moves about the tent it's hard to avoid brushing against the other occupying body, but feeling secure that Azula wasn't currently having one of her more unstable moments Diana made no effort to avoid it. Besides, it was funny to see the faces the woman pulled when she felt Diana was being encroaching and 'too familiar'.

Diana finally settles into a comfortable sitting position and begins pulling things out of the container, passing them to Azula to inspect. While they certainly didn't have enough faith to trust each other, Diana understood well enough that her best bet of survival right now was the experienced victor, which meant at least attempting to appease her… when necessary. Diana was still herself afterall.

“Some water rations. That looks like a first aid kit and there's this sleeping bag.” She smirks at the older woman. “Just one I'm afraid but I'm willing to share.”

[hit_girl_mindy]

She was moving quickly now. She only had a little bit of water, and had rationed what she could, but what she needed right now was a weapon. That meant looking, looking, and conserving her energy. That was, at least, easier with some small morsel in her stomach. If there was one thing Mindy was able to understand, it was how far she could test herself.

Mindy was about to get face to face with exactly how much she could stand, of course, since she was moving dangerously close to the bear trap.