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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"Someone who's soft. A dipshit," Howard says bluntly. He finds a more comfortable position in the fork of a bough and chews the corner of his tongue. His oral fixation tends to get worse when he's hungry, although he rarely actually catches he's doing it until the inside of his mouth is sore and swollen.

He's not used to this humidity. It's not as if he can't tolerate it, but it's making his breathing shallow. He pauses as he sees something from this vantage point that Guy might not catch. Something moving through the tall grass a few hundred yards away.

He almost doesn't say anything.

"You might want to find high ground."

Looking around, another rustle of grass reveals another raptor, even closer. Howard starts to get higher, hoping he's right that these bastards can't climb.

"I'm not soft," Guy said, confused, and then Howard gave him the warning and he heard rustling grass.

Rustling grass was rarely good.

Which was why Guy made a quiet terrified noise that sounded like, "Nnng-ee-enn-ngh," and jumped up and climbed up a nearby tree like he was freakin' Spider-Man. In some places, where there weren't branches, he just climbed using the bark, fingers digging into cracks in it.

From where he was perched in his branch, slightly higher than where Howard was perched in his own tree, he said in a hushed voice, "People who are soft can't climb trees like that." The raptors pushed through the grass, and Guy's eyebrows rose. "Uh. Thanks for that warning, by the way."

Edited 2013-11-10 08:30 (UTC)

"You're welcome," Howard says. The raptors sniff where Guy was just at and circle around the trunk of the two trees they're in, like a figure eight. Just two of them. Howard stays still, trying to remember if it's raptors of t-rexes who see only movement.

One of the raptors takes a running leap at Guy's tree.

"Whoop, okay, going up. Higher's good. Let's try higher."

He climbed even higher into the tree and then stopped, not risking heading up even higher where the branches might be thinner.

Then he broke a thinner branch off near where he was sitting, sawing at it with his flint knife a bit to break it lose and started digging said knife into the bark, breaking through the crusty outer layer and shredding some of the wood underneath.

Despite the snarling creatures below, he seemed oddly unphased by the situation, other than clearly making sure he wasn't letting his legs dangle too much. It was as if he was used to getting treed by vicious death machines.

"Poke it!" Howard hisses as he climbs higher. It hasn't started coming from him, but he's sure that once it realizes it can't get Guy it'll start looking around. Maybe Guy can blind it.

And if it just ticks the raptor off, well. At least it's ticked off and focused on Guy.

The other raptor makes a high-pitched chirp noise.

"Poking things just makes them mad," Guy said with an slight eyeroll. "Duh."

Despite the threat of the raptors down below, Guy was completely absorbed in what he was doing, as if he had resigned himself to the fact that he might not finish what he was doing in time. He was moving quickly but that zen calm seemed to be keeping him focused and keeping him from being clumsy from fear. In fact he even managed to jam the stick into a crook in the tree so he could climb out slightly and reach for some seed pods dangling from a nearby tree, before moving back to his spot on the branch.

It was a strange sort of magic that he was working, pulling bits of bark and shredded wood apart, cutting open the dry seed pods and half-pulling out the fluff instead, and binding it all together at the end of the stick. He was a cook putting together the right ingredients for a meal, trying to figure out the perfect quantities to add to make sure his souffle actually rose like it was supposed to.

"I really wish I had something other than green wood," he said, tucking the end of the stick under his leg so it didn't fall and reaching into the little vine bag attacked to his back and pulling out two small stones, one of them shiny and pale, the other flecked with little shiny bits. "But, you know how it is: rain instead of clear skies, fruit instead of meat."

Life didn't always give you what you needed when you needed it. You made do.

Striking the two stones against each other produced a spark. A few more strikes got even larger sparks going, until they started to land in the fluff. Tiny wisps of smoke started to rise up lazily from it and he leaned forward to gently blow on them.

"Come on, come on, come on, come on," he whispered to it.

Talking to it didn't really convince it to go faster but it made him feel better when he did it, and besides, whispering sometimes meant the best amount of breath blown to get it alight without blowing it out.

Down below, the raptor started to use its back claws to gain some footing against the tree. The first jump was still just a bit too short and wild, but it looked like it might possibly be able to get enough leverage to jump higher if it kept trying.

Edited 2013-11-13 05:28 (UTC)

As scared as Howard is of things that want to eat him - and he's very scared - he manages to pull the majority of his attention from the raptors to Guy. That's where the action is, unless the raptors decide to start climbing.

If they weren't in a death match, he thinks he'd like Guy. He likes smart, resourceful. Maybe if he comes back after the next Arena he'll watch this guy's footage and pick up some fresh tricks.

But for the moment, once he sees Guy blowing air, he not only heads higher but also upwind, away from the smoke he's sure will kick up. Even wet as it is here, he doesn't want to risk it.

"Do you know how to use matches?" he yells.

"No. I would figure it out, but seeing as I don't know what they are and that I don't have any, I'll stick to what I know," Guy said glibly, grinning as the fluff started to burn, and then as the wood started to take as well. Green wood was difficult to get going, especially when things were as wet as they were right now.

The trick was to get a fire burning long enough in other parts of the torch to dry it out enough that it would burn, and to pack it with enough things that burned easily to start the whole thing up.

He blew and blew, in just the right ways until the torch finally lit up. The fire crackled and smoked from the moisture, smoldering, yet it still burned bright.

He got it alight just in time. One of the raptors jumped, managing to dig their back claws into the trunk enough to get some leverage for a good jump, its teeth snapping -

- and then Guy promptly pulled the torch out from under his leg before the branch he was sitting on started to burn as well and used it to hit the raptor in the face, scalding its eye.

"Bad!" Guy admonished. "Bad death lizard! Stay down there!"

Edited 2013-11-15 04:38 (UTC)

Howard would say he has some, but number one rule of survival - never advertise you have something worth killing you over. Whether that comes to firemaking gear or food is about as irrelevant as whether or not the opportunity comes up moments before they're potentially eaten by raptors.

Howard starts to find his own kindling, cracking open some sort of fruit and ripping bark off the tree he's seated on. Small twigs, thin bits - everything's so damn green here, and even his clothes are damp still from the last rain. He bites his lip until it cracks, although he's been avoiding the sores from last arena due to the blessed, blessed humidity.

The raptor, now joined by no less than four of its companions, gives a wild hiss and squeal as it falls back from the tree. The look it gives Guy is nothing short of murderous, which, unfortunately for it, can hardly up the ante when the stakes were already life or death. It starts to leap again.

It got another smack for its trouble and he purposefully aimed for the other eye this time and tried to sweep the torch along its snout.

Smell was as important as sight but an animal that'd had its nasal passages fried by heat was going to have a bit of trouble with smelling things. And possibly with breathing. Gotta love those inhalation injuries.

The creature let out a shrill squeal as it fell.

"I can do this aaall day," he said sternly to the raptors below. "I've got lots of things to burn up here. I can also find other ways to kill you - I'm good at that."

If there were any place to go, Howard would up and ollie out to leave Guy to continue his remarkable work fending for himself. However, at this point Howard figures that making any effort to get away from the scene of the crime will just make him look like a tasty thing that isn't currently wielding a burning death prod.

So teamwork is the way to go. Howard begins to hack away smaller dead branches on his tree and wrap them in his belt into a bundle. The dead wood isn't dry, per se, but it's less wet than anything green.

"Yo, I'm going to toss this to you. Your stick's gonna burn up eventually."

Guy nodded.

"This is mostly the seed pods and the things I packed in. It's going to burn out in a minute."

Clinging to the branch with his legs, he held out his free hand.

"Make sure it's a good toss," he said. "If it falls too short, I'm not going down to pick it up."

Howard can't reach without leaning precipitously far out, so he tosses the bundle as far as he can. Unfortunately, throwing has never been his strong suit.

Immediately after letting go he slams his arms back around the trunk like an oversized koala clinging for dear life.

Guy reached put as far as he could and caught it but because he had to overextend his body, it caused him to flip upside down on the branch. Fortunately, his legs were clamped on tight so he didn't fall. Unforunately, he was hanging too low, which left him a tasty morsel dangling right over the raptors.

"Nnneeenguh!"

Boy, that sure was a very panicked noise coming out of his mouth.

One of the raptors jumped and Guy bashed it in the face with his torch, bending his body sideways to avoid its snapping mouth. Then he threw the arm holding the dried sticks Howard had tossed him over the branch and started squirming his way back right-side up.

"You couldn't - toss it - a little - farther?"

Edited 2013-11-18 03:52 (UTC)

"Sorry, man!" If only because it makes it a little harder to guarantee his own safety. A branch snaps under Howard's feet but he manages to stay on his post. "Set the whole thing on fire and throw it!"

Howard doesn't think it'll catch that fast, but he hopes the raptors will go for the distraction and give him, at least, time to jump away.

"What? I'm not throwing it!" Guy said, tucking the unlit end of his torch under his armpit so he could prepare the sticks into a proper torch. "Fire doesn't attract animals, it scares them away. That won't do anything."

No no, he was going to just burn the heck out of them until they decided he and Howard weren't worth the pain.

"Hey hey hey hey hey, come and get it!" he said, dancing slightly in place on the branch, trying to get their attention on him so they'd jump up high enough for him to burn their eyes and noses. One did and he whapped it, causing it to retreat, screeching. "Painful scaldings right here guys, there's enough for everybody!"

"I meant at them!" Howard just refrains from tacking 'moron' onto that, mostly because he's noticed that Guy's trying to save them both rather than just his own skin. Which is polite, but rather unrequited.

The raptors circle the tree more, then all rear their heads up at once, tilting them towards the sound of running in the jungle. And panting.

Howard's never been happier to run into another Tribute in the Arena. He sees a woman racing as fast as she can, completely oblivious to them up in the tree, and moving past and now away from them.

"Eat her" he hisses down at the raptors, wondering how much intelligence the Capitol gifted their mutts with.

Seeing that the death lizards were looking elsewhere, rather than continuing to wave his arms and get their attention, Guy froze in place on the branch, trying to keep them from paying attention to him again.

Looking over at Howard, he didn't shush him - because that would have made noise - but he did purse his lips as if he was shushing him.

Howard stays still too, and though the raptors hesitate, in a moment they decide the quarry on the ground seems a better bet. They take off, rushing through the leaves.

Howard takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out. It stutters past trembling lips.

Guy was very cautious about talking. It wasn't until the first torch he made sputtered out that he finally deemed it safe to speak up without attracting the attention of the raptors again.

"Thaaat was close," he finally said. "You okay over there?"

His lips weren't trembling and his voice sounded as steady and casual as it had when he'd first started talking to Howard.

Edited 2013-11-20 05:22 (UTC)

"Once I start breathing again, sure."

He's never going to get used to near-death. He'd figure with how many times he's cheated death - and how many times he hasn't - that he'd be over it by now, but his lips are numb and his blood is pounding in his ears.

And he makes a mental note that Guy is not the same way.

Guy shook the second torch until the fire went out and then dropped the remains of it down to the ground. Then, after looking around cautiously and listening for a little while for any people or predators, he climbed down from the tree.

"I think I'm going to leave now," Guy said. "Thanks again. You didn't have to do that."

Edited 2013-11-21 22:54 (UTC)

"You're welcome," Howard says, breathing into his hands to calm himself. "Don't expect it a second time."

He'll be staying in the trees for a while.

"I know."

Teenagers.

They had teenagers. Kids.

Teenagers that had to make threats like that.

Guy ran off and hoped against hope he didn't run into Howard again.

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Yabba Dabba Nooooo [open]

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